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Sneak Peek from the Stacks: Spring Daffodils
Lantern slide of little boy in a field of Narcissus Poeticus, circa 1930. Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Gardens, J. Horace McFarland Collection.For the 'Sneak Peek from the Stacks' this...
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Exploring Artists' Personal Collections: The Morgan and Marvin Smith...
Morgan and Marvin Smith were twin brothers and highly prolific African American artists who are regarded as the premiere photographers of the Harlem area from the 1930s-1950s. Originally from...
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A Bookplate for the Birds
Plate illustrating Swann's Synopsis of the AccipitresThe Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library of Natural History has a number of rare volumes formerly owned by naturalists. Some of the books have autographs...
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Iran in Photographs
Hakim Nur-Mahmud and Family, by Antoin Sevruguin. Myron Bement Smith CollectionLast year the Freer|Sackler Archives put together a team to digitize, research and catalog our large and growing...
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Perseverance in Preservation
“…let us save what remains: not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them...
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Have You Seen Me?
Portrait of America (detail), 1933We’ve mentioned on this blog before how valuable the Peter A. Juley & Son Collection is to scholars and historians in their research. The Juley firm worked with...
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Larry Beck: Contemporary Native American Art and Why We Collect Artists' Papers
Larry Beck, "Tunghak Inua." 1982.NMAI catalog number 25/5410Contemporary Native American art plays a very important role at the National Museum of the American Indian, which sometimes surprises people...
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LAX in the Stacks
Creek lacrosse players in Oklahoma fight for the ball by Eugene Heflin, 1938. (NAA INV 01783800) SPC Se Creek BAE 3302 (V 2) 01783800, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.Spring...
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Washington D.C., it's Paradise to Me
Adolph Gottlieb postcard to Paul Bodin, 1937 Oct. 27Paul Bodin papers, Archives of American Art It was on this day in 1802 that Washington D.C. was first incorporated as a city. Although the...
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Spring: A Time for New Beginnings
Garnett McCoy and Arthur Breton at the Archives of American Art, 1979, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Negative Number: SIA79-12086-14When May arrives, we are often struck with spring fever and...
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A Working Holiday in Puerto Rico
Ever since my colleague and friend Annie Santiago left Washington for Puerto Rico in the 1980s, after she had served on the staff of the National Museum of History and Technology (now American History)...
View ArticleInvitation to Voyage
Documentary and fiction film alike engage the imagination. And travelogue films with their evocation of imaginary landscapes seem to exist somewhere between the real and the imagined. Popular on film...
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Pollera: National Costume of Panama
Panama, affectionately known as el puente del mundo, corazón del universe (bridge of the world, heart of the universe), is known mainly for the Panama Canal and sports figures such as boxer Roberto...
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Highlight of your day: The Fitalians
The Fitalians, from FJ 2865, Roots: The Rock and Roll Sound of Louisiana and Mississippi (c. 1965) production file, Moses and Frances Asch Collection"This group of young men all hail from Chattanooga...
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The Pen is Mightier
It’s always satisfying to discover those direct connections between the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation archival records and the objects that came into the museum during its many years...
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Making "Tangible Biscuits" with Emory Cook
Booklet promoting Microfusion, Cook Instruments Corp. (COOK-10-26). From the Cook Labs records. With albums like A Double Barrel Blast,Hellish Calypso, and Kilts on Parade, it's easy to see how Emory...
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Armillary Spheres
Finale, Carmel, CA. 2009. Bonnie Brooks, photographerLike any number of inventions, the origins of the armillary sphere are debated, credited to everyone from an ancient Greek philosopher to a Roman...
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Reginald Marsh's Coney Island
Reginald Marsh sketching people on the beach, 193- / Gene Pyle, photographer. Reginald Marsh papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.Painter Reginald Marsh is known for his depictions...
View ArticleJourney Through the Panama Canal
The 48 mile long Panama Canal that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, opened in 1914, changed ocean voyage. In June 2015, just a little over 100 years later, a new canal lane with bigger...
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How I Found Granny at the Smithsonian
"I Found Granny…?" What does that mean? Well, I found a photograph of my Granny in the Scurlock Studio Records--an important personal treasure! Negatives in this large collection in the Smithsonian’s...
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