The Smithsonian Institution Archives, part of the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, collects, preserves, and makes available the history of the Smithsonian Institution.
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Operating as usual
What types of music bring you comfort? Surprising literally no one, we’re pretty into "The Smithsonian Polka."
It was composed by W. Bergman, a D.C. music teacher, likely to commemorate the opening of the Smithsonian Castle.
Listen to the tune and explore a few more of our favorite digital items in our collections on today’s blog → s.si.edu/3lu4eyr
Louis R. Purnell, Smithsonian’s first African American curator, was an original member of the Tuskegee Airmen.
During World War II, he flew 88 combat missions over North Africa, Italy, and Germany. → s.si.edu/3197szJ #ArchivesVeterans
School is now in session. ✏️🍎
This week's #SmithsonianOpenAccess puzzle is taking us back to school. This New England schoolroom was part of the Hall of Everyday Life in Early America, which opened at
Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in 1957. → s.si.edu/38qOUiz
Having trouble focusing today? You're not alone. Take a short break with this week’s #SmithsonianOpenAccess puzzle, featuring the Statue of Freedom model that was on display at the Smithsonian between 1900 and 1967.
🧩 → s.si.edu/3mUQT2F
National Museum of American History
As we were developing our exhibition, "American Democracy: A Great Leap of Faith" we asked our visitors to reflect on why they vote, what it means to them, and how voting affects the nation's democracy. As this year's campaign season comes to an end, we wanted to share their responses.
You can explore the exhibition online here: http://s.si.edu/american-democracy
Interested in participating in this year's election? Government agencies like the U.S. Election Assistance Commission can provide useful information, from voter registration lookups to polling place locations: https://www.eac.gov/
Before Election Day, let’s take a look back at “The Right to Vote,” a 1972–74 exhibition at Smithsonian's National Museum of American History that traced the history of voting rights in the United States
It was scheduled to coincide with the 1972 presidential election and explored suffrage for women, African Americans, Native Americans, soldiers, immigrants, and beyond. → s.si.edu/2GkaRUD #VoteHistory
Smithsonian’s evening guards have seen things. Haunted things. 👻 They've reported spotting bronze animal statues that come alive, the ghost of Secretary Joseph Henry, and a museum aide with long, white hair roaming around in a nightgown.
Okay, that last one is 100% real.
In her later years, museum aide Jesse Beach basically moved into Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, where she often spooked guards by wandering around at night.
Things got slightly more awkward one evening when a guard walked in on her taking a bath in the geology lab. Thanks to Beach’s wanderings, Smithsonian Secretary Alexander Wetmore began requiring museum staff to start going home by midnight.
Head to our blog for more spooky reports and ghostly encounters at the Smithsonian. → s.si.edu/34HMslt (📷:80-20128) #MuseumTrickOrTreat
Each week on the blog, we spotlight women who have been influential at the Smithsonian and in their fields. In most cases, they have not been fully recognized for their work.
Today, read about Dr. Carol F. Jopling, chief librarian at Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, 1981-84, and an expert on the anthropological study of architecture. → s.si.edu/35NwINc
(📷: Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute)
We know it’s Monday morning, but why the long, er, neck?
This photograph of Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History’s Diplodocus, a 70-foot-long sauropod, has recently been designated as #SmithsonianOpenAccess. Piece it together.
🧩 → s.si.edu/3mhPfrk
Photos from Smithsonian Institution Archives's post
We weren’t about to just let Open Access Week slip by without adding hundreds of ✨brand new✨ images to the #SmithsonianOpenAccess portal.
These photographs of "1876: A Centennial Exhibition" in the 1970s are a few of our favorites. Explore more → s.si.edu/3mkyifN #OAWeek
On this day in 1746, Princeton University was chartered.
One hundred years later, the chair of the university’s natural history department was appointed first Secretary of the Smithsonian. Learn more about Joseph Henry on our site → s.si.edu/3koz2ju (📷:SIA2009-1254)
The Smithsonian has a long history of studying, caring for, and educating the public about sloths. 🦥
Skeletal remains of extinct giant sloth species have been exhibited at the Institution since the late 19th century, and the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute has been home to living sloths since around 1900. Learn more on our blog for #InternationalSlothDay → s.si.edu/2T97wKP
❓: "What are your favorite pieces in the Archives?”
A: “It’s hard not to love...everything.”
We felt that. ❤️ Our staff spoke with Open Data Institute about how we rely on data in our work. Watch it now → s.si.edu/354LoqP
What kind of work goes into maintaining the archives responsible for capturing the history of the world’s largest museum, education, and research complex? St...
The Smithsonian Marine Station, part of Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, was established in Florida on this day in 1971. 🌊
Listen to clips from oral history interviews with the station’s founding director and the first woman to direct a science unit at the Smithsonian, Dr. Mary E. Rice → s.si.edu/3j5mf4b
Our reading room might be closed, but our reference staff has not stopped answering your questions.
Read about a few of the topics researchers have been exploring, some images in our collections that will be featured in upcoming publications, and virtual resources → s.si.edu/2H2n2px
There was drama. There was adventure. There were menial administrative tasks! 🦕
This #NationalFossilDay, learn about the origins of the Smithsonian’s fossil collections and the history of some of the specimens on display in #DeepTime at Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History → s.si.edu/3k1P96G
In between endless snack breaks, we’ve been busy making our collections more digitally available to you. We’ve recently added:
🔸 3,120 historical images
🔸 696 new or revised finding aids
🔸 37 finding aids with new links to digitized materials
More details on the blog → s.si.edu/3lKSDuO
Earlier this week, the National Audubon Society published a piece on Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History ornithologist Roxie Laybourne, who pioneered the study of forensic ornithology. The author used audio from oral history interviews in our collections to tell Laybourne's story. → www.audubon.org/news/the-remarkable-life-roxie-laybourne
"Whatever frustrations Laybourne felt as a woman in science were channeled into her work. It wasn’t enough to do a better job than everyone else; Laybourne wanted to do work that other people simply couldn’t do."
(📷:SIA2014-07421, SIA2014-07441, SIA2014-07390)
Today marks the anniversary of the 1968 opening ceremonies for National Portrait Gallery. 🎉
Portraits were among the earliest works that the Smithsonian acquired in the 1840s. However, it was not until 1962 that the United States Congress officially established the National Portrait Gallery as a bureau of the Smithsonian.
The Gallery’s first exhibition opened in 1965 in the Smithsonian’s Arts and Industries Building, and, by 1968, visitors could explore the collections in the Gallery’s present space in the historic Patent Office Building, which it shares with Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery. → s.si.edu/3d2Kvm7 (📷:94-13189)
Mark your calendars (might we suggest using a pencil)! ✏️
Next Wednesday, October 7, our team will be ready to answer all of your burning questions for #AskAnArchivist Day on Instagram and Twitter.
Need some inspiration? Read last year’s recap → s.si.edu/30phw73 #AmericanArchivesMonth
This #InternationalPodcastDay, revisit Smithsonian's Sidedoor Podcast episodes that feature Archives staff and collections.
Roxie Laybourne → s.si.edu/3bfHWvi
Smokey Bear → s.si.edu/34daH9x
Megatherium Club → s.si.edu/2SfAfNP
S. Dillon Ripley → s.si.edu/2YmIMmu
Learn more about Ep. 1 | If These Bones Could Talk
Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture
We are excited to announce Kevin Young, director of the
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, will become the new director of our Museum, effective Jan. 11, 2021. He succeeds the founding director, Lonnie G. Bunch III, who is now the Secretary of the Smithsonian.
More: http://s.si.edu/2EPVX82
In 1823, Smithsonian founding donor James Smithson published "An Improved Method of Making Coffee." ☕️
Fortunately, Smithsonian Magazine tried the English chemist's technique, so you don't have to. → s.si.edu/2S8SOD9 #NationalCoffeeDay
On this day in 1999, several hundred people gathered on the National Mall for the groundbreaking of Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. At the ceremony, Museum founding director W. Richard West shared what the new space meant for Native Americans and their histories. “For Indian America, this hemispheric Institution of living cultures represents a seminal occasion to reconcile a present and future with an often troubled and tumultuous past.”
Learn more about the history of the Museum on our website → s.si.edu/3kFVTqL (📷:SIA2013-07855)
We’re diving back into the Hungerford Deed, a document that reveals the roots of Smithsonian founding donor James Smithson’s wealth. We still don’t know why the English scientist donated his fortune to the United States, but thanks to the Deed, we have a better sense of where that money came from.
This week on the blog, we explored one of the properties mentioned in the Deed, where members of the Hungerford family, Smithson's ancestors, lived, loved, and sued each other. ❤️ s.si.edu/3ctLbk4
It’s hard to believe that it’s already been four years since Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture opened to the public on this day in 2016.
The historic day was the culmination of a century of efforts to establish an African American history museum on the National Mall. → s.si.edu/2mA2Fob
“When we created this museum we knew there was no post-racial America... it had to be more than a monument to the past, we wanted it to be a place for reconciliation and healing." - Lonnie G. Bunch III, Smithsonian Secretary & NMAAHC Founding Director
On September 24, 2016, our Museum opened its doors to the world, becoming the largest cultural destination devoted to exploring the American story through the African American lens. Our Museum building is African American history and culture writ large on the National Mall. Its location and its design represent the past, present, and future of the African American experience in ways tangible and symbolic. #APeoplesJourney #ANationsStory
Smithsonian Transcription Center
Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History Archaeologists Ralph and Rose Solecki - who met and married as Columbia University graduate students - conducted multiple excavations in northern Iraq in the 1950 and 1960s, uncovering nine Neanderthal skeletons, two Proto-Neolithic sites, and artifacts spanning over 65,000 years of human prehistory.
Their archeological discoveries at Shanidar Cave and the Zawi Chemi Shanidar sites in Iraq fundamentally changed the way that anthropologists understand human evolution, Neanderthal culture, and the development of animal domestication.
Now you can help anthropologists and other researchers around the world learn even more about human prehistory by transcribing archaeological data cards from the Ralph and Rose Solecki Papers, held in the National Anthropological Archives -> https://transcription.si.edu/project/29072.
We join the nation in remembering the life and legacy of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
On October 1, 1993, Smithsonian Photographic Services staff were in the courtroom to document her formal investiture ceremony. (📷:93-13527A-08)
We’ve been waiting for you, autumn. 🍁🍂
Dr. Leo J. Hickey, curator and research scientist in paleobiology at Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History from 1969 to 1982, revolutionized the study of fossil leaves by conducting a comprehensive study of leaf vein patterns in living plants and using those patterns to identify and classify fossils. → s.si.edu/301mK8F #FirstDayOfFall
Happy 16th birthday to Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. 🎉
In 2004, the D.C. museum’s opening day kicked off with the Native Nations Procession, the largest known gathering of Native American peoples in modern history. The event featured 25,000 representatives of more than 500 tribes and Native communities. → s.si.edu/3kFVTqL
Smithsonian
We remember Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Ginsburg was serving on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia when President Bill Clinton nominated her in 1993, making her the second woman to serve on the Supreme Court.
This 1996 portrait by Everett Raymond Kinstler is in our National Portrait Gallery's collection.
Photos from Smithsonian Institution Archives's post
Each week, we share links to cool digital projects from other archives, libraries, museums, and beyond in a blog series called #LinkLove.
Meet the scientists behind #BlackMammalogistsWeek, stream Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art's Sufi music festival, explore New York Botanical Garden’s “Black Botany” exhibit, & more → s.si.edu/3iK6ksG (📷:89-11184)
One way we preserve Latinx history at the Smithsonian is by capturing the Smithsonian Latino Center’s website.
Did you know that the Center launched the Latino Virtual Museum in Second Life in 2009? We’re exploring that and more on the blog → s.si.edu/32FGzUU #WebArchiving #HispanicHeritageMonth
Capital Gallery, 600 Maryland Ave SW, Suite 3000
Washington D.C., DC
20024
The Smithsonian Institution Archives is located in the Capital Gallery Building, Suite 3000 located at 600 Maryland Avenue SW, Washington, DC, 20024. Capital Gallery is one block south of the National Mall on the corner of Maryland Avenue and 7th Street, Southwest. There is an entrance to L'Enfant Plaza Metro Station just outside the building, and the Archives is on the third floor. Metro: The best way to get to the Archives is by taking Metrorail, Washington, DC’s subway system. Use L’Enfant Plaza station, on Metrorail's Blue, Orange, Yellow, and Green lines, and take the Maryland Avenue and 7th Street, SW exit. This will place you directly in front of the Capital Gallery Building. Simply take the elevator to the third floor to reach the Archives. For a Metrorail map and more information, visit the Metro Website www.wmata.com. Bus: Metrobus links Washington with nearby communities in Maryland and Virginia, and has stops near the Archives. The D.C. Circulator bus also offers a quick and convenient service to the Archives via the Circulator’s Convention Center - SW Waterfront line. More information is here: http://siarchives.si.edu/about/contact-us
The Archives is open to all researchers (except children under twelve). Business hours are Monday–Friday, 9 a.m.–5 p.m., except for Federal holidays. Prior to your visit, we ask that you review the Collections Access Policies (http://siarchives.si.edu/services/collections-access-policies) and contact us to ensure that pertinent records are available during your visit.
| Monday | 09:00 - 17:00 |
| Tuesday | 09:00 - 17:00 |
| Wednesday | 09:00 - 17:00 |
| Thursday | 09:00 - 17:00 |
| Friday | 09:00 - 17:00 |
Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Smithsonian Institution Archives posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Mark your calendars (might we suggest using a pencil)! ✏️ Next Wednesday, October 7, our team will be ready to answer all of your burning questions for #AskAnArchivist Day on Instagram and Twitter. Need some inspiration? Read last year’s recap → s.si.edu/30phw73 #AmericanArchivesMonth
One way we preserve Latinx history at the Smithsonian is by capturing the Smithsonian Latino Center’s website. Did you know that the Center launched the Latino Virtual Museum in Second Life in 2009? We’re exploring that and more on the blog → s.si.edu/32FGzUU #WebArchiving #HispanicHeritageMonth
The Smithsonian Institution Archives collects, preserves, and makes available the history of Smithsonian’s contributions to science, technology, art, and culture. Help support our work today —> s.si.edu/ArchivesDonate #SupportYourSmithsonian
Despite being an amateur photographer with no scientific training and a hearing impairment, Julian Papin Scott was able to persuade thousands of scientists (novices and Nobels) to pause and pose in their labs. 📸 More about Scott's work on the blog ➡️ s.si.edu/JPScott_PartOne
Thirty-six years ago today, “M*A*S*H: Binding Up the Wounds” opened at the National Museum of American History, and the response was overwhelming. The exhibit, which was extended twice due to demand, saw over a million visits and required timed passes to enter. Alan Alda and other stars spoke at the opening event. More on today's blog ➡️ s.si.edu/MASH #OTD
Spin around to today’s blog where we’re talking about the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution Frisbee Festival, which began in 1977. Frisbee champions, fans (and their dogs), and the public gathered on the National Mall for frisbee workshops and exhibitions. s.si.edu/frisbee_fest (📷:Nathan Benn)
Happy #NewYearsDay! The Archives had a very busy year, so before we highlight our upcoming projects, we’re taking a quick look back at what we accomplished in 2018. Read about our work and explore our top five blog posts of the year --> http://s.si.edu/2TjYqsP
Happy "International Jazz Day!" Celebrate by taking a trip back to this 1968 Jazz Parade, in New Orleans' French Quarter. https://s.si.edu/JazzDay
Live now with our archives conservators who will show us behind-the-scenes action on preserving field books destined for Smithsonian Transcription Center. #MaterialMatters #PresWeek
During #WomensHistoryMonth we were able to transcribe over 300 field book pages, all thanks to Smithsonian Transcription Center Volunpeers. We wanted to share this clip from a 1984 episode of Smithsonian World featuring Devra Kleiman, one of our #ArchivesAwesomeWomen whom you helped transcribe!
We are live on groundbreaking women in science on the Smithsonian Transcription Center with historians Pam Henson and Lisa Fthenakis.
Join us as we visit the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History's Department of Entomology to learn how scientists are using century-old field notes from the Archives’ collection to aid new research!
We're live now as we uncover an archival mystery! A year ago on our blog, we shared the conservation treatment our Collections Care team used on two crayon drawings of bison. At the time, we didn’t know much about the drawings—why were they made? Why did the Smithsonian have them?
From our family to yours: Season's Greetings from the Smithsonian Institution Archives!
Before you get all caught up in the holiday rush, enjoy a few beautiful greeting cards from our collection! http://s.si.edu/2hWSBQP
Part 2: In celebration of Archives Month, we are taking a behind-the-scenes look into how a Civil War-era diary in our collection goes from conservation to our website for you to search and use. Please leave any questions in the comments section.
In celebration of Archives Month, we are taking a behind-the-scenes look into how a Civil War-era diary in our collection goes from conservation to our website for you to search and use. Please leave any questions in the comments section.
Join us for a look into the history of the Smithsonian and its collections through our Annual Curator’s Reports, with Smithsonian historian Pam Henson.
Discussing the Tulsa riots with John Franklin from Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture #PassTheMic #APeoplesJourney
The National Mall before Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and after! Lots of great Smithsonian and D.C. #ThrowbackThursday pictures in today's blog post (including, Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, and National Museum of American History!) http://s.si.edu/1PiGDtp
Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives, Smithsonian
600 Maryland Ave SWSmithsonian Asian Pacific American Center
600 Maryland Ave SWNational Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian In
Independence Ave at 6th St, SWArmy Medical Museum and Library
Armed Forces Institute of Pathology Building, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, 13th St. and Fern Pl.Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Independence Avenue at Seventh Street, SW
National Postal Museum's Department of Educat
2 Massachusetts Ave NE
NSF REU Site: Natural History Research Experi
1000 Constitution Ave NW
Wax Museum Night Club Washington DC
Fourth and E Streets SW