Congrats to these Affiliates making news! Each month we highlight Affiliate-Smithsonian and Affiliate-Affiliate collaborations making headlines.  If you have a clipping highlighting a collaboration with the Smithsonian or with a fellow Affiliate you’d like to have considered for the Affiliate blog, please contact Elizabeth Bugbee.

Oklahoma History Center (Oklahoma City, OK)
Smithsonian grant funds living Asian-American project at Oklahoma History Center
The Oklahoma History Center is one of a handful of museums across the nation that received a grant from the Smithsonian Institution to educate middle school students about Asian-American history. The $2,500 grant helped start an oral history program titled “Young Historians, Living Histories” that will allow history center staff to teach students how to reach out to Asian-Americans, interview them on camera and submit the video to the Smithsonian website.

Ellen Noel Art Museum (Odessa, Texas)
Ellen Noel Museum launches 3-D printing studio
In 2005, George Jacob was the project director for a Smithsonian exhibit called “Ray Charles: The Genius.” “When I worked on that exhibit, that was the first time I had really given much thought to how the visually impaired learn about art,” Jacob said. “It made me realize that there is nothing really tactile to help teach the visually impaired.” Jacob is now the executive director of the Ellen Noel Art Museum in Odessa, and he hasn’t forgotten about the challenges facing those without sight. In fact, it’s the driving motivation behind the museum’s newest pieces of cutting edge equipment: 3-D printers.

Buffalo Bill Center of the West (Cody, Wyoming)
Mother of all Swiss Army knives,’ this 19th century multi-tool has it all, including a .22 revolver
Owned by the Smithsonian Institution and displayed at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Wyoming, this clever contraption would have made any cowboy the king of the corral.

Western Reserve Historical Society (Cleveland, Ohio)
AIHP- Oral History Project , Training in progress!!
Selected Students to work on the AIHP and WRHS – oral History Project with a grant from the Smithsonian

“Apollo 8 Coming Home” by Robert T. McCall is part of “Paintings of the Space Age” Smithsonian exhibit at the Polk Museum of Art in Lakeland, FL on Wednesday October 9, 2013.

Polk Museum of Art (Lakeland, Fla.)
Polk Museum Showcases Paintings from Smithsonian
A partnership between the Polk Museum of Art and the Smithsonian is bringing back the thrill of the United States’ unprecedented early space exploration through “Paintings of the Space Age,” on exhibit through Dec. 7 in the museum’s Dorothy Jenkins Gallery. The exhibition’s opening coincides with NASA’s 55th anniversary occurring this month.

Buffalo Bill Center of the West (Cody, WY), High Museum of Art (Atlanta, GA), Booth Western Art Museum (Cartersville, GA)
From Wyoming to Cartersville: ‘Today’s West!’ exhibit kicks off during Southeastern Cowboy Festival & Symposium
“To help bolster its audience during the winter months, the Buffalo Bill Center’s Western art collection is traveling east. Split between a pair of concurrently running exhibitions at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and Cartersville’s Booth Western Art Museum, the Wyoming museum’s artwork will enable patrons to view the development and progression of this artistic field. . For those seeking a more immersive study of “Today’s West!” four art lectures will be centered on the exhibit and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West Friday in the Booth Theatre: . “Advance Work: Art and Advertising in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West” by Michelle Anne Delaney, director of the Smithsonian Institution’s Consortium for Understanding the American Experience…”

Museum of the Rockies (Bozeman, MT)
My T. Rex Is Bigger Than Yours
National Fossil Day, an annual celebration of all things fossil, has come around again. But not everyone is jubilant. As the government shutdown ticks on–with debate fossilized, you might say–a mighty Cretaceous carnivore has been left in limbo on the day it was supposed to be acclaimed. There is no joy in Washington, D.C., for mighty T. rex has struck out. The dinosaur in question, fondly known as the Wankel rex, was due to arrive today, shipped off from the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana, for a ceremonial greeting at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. That warm welcome is delayed until the spring.