Say hello to our new Affiliates

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interior1

A look at the interior of the Hiller Aviation Museum

 This summer, Smithsonian Affiliations was pleased to welcome three new organizations to its network of 165 Affiliate partners in 41 states, D.C., Panama and Puerto Rico. Here’s a chance to get to know them a little more– 

Hiller Aviation Museum (San Carlos, CA)

Ever heard of the Black Diamond? No, it’s not a sparkling gemstone, but an airplane built by a couple of shipyard buddies in 1910. After a successful flight in 1912, the Diamond was crated and stored until 1930 when the Yuba College Aeronautical School fixed it up and displayed the airplane at the Oakland Airport. The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum acquired it in 1948, before subsequently loaning it to the Hiller Aviation Museum for restoration. Visitors to the Hiller today can experience a piece of the Smithsonian, and America’s aviation history. Through unique aircraft collections, exhibits, and programs, the museum provides a stimulating environment with multiple ways for visitors to experience the adventure and innovation of flight and to use aviation as a portal for exploring science, history, and technology. Take a virtual walkthrough of the Hiller Aviation Museum and find out more about the Black Diamond restoration project!

Tellus: Northwest Georgia Science Museum   (Cartersville, GA)

tellusThis mining museum located just north of Atlanta just got an $18 million facelift. The Tellus: Northwest Georgia Science museum is a new version of the old museum. In fact, the old museum – all 9,000 square feet of it – could fit into just one of its four new galleries that make up the 120,000 square foot museum today. The Tellus is a museum on a mission to bring the latest research and information on current science topics to visitors from Atlanta to Chattanooga. Only recently announcing their Affiliation with the Smithsonian, the Tellus hopes to bring more artifacts to its new space through the Affiliations program and enhance their already eye-popping collection of minerals, rocks, gems and fossil specimens, and objects related to Georgia’s rich mining heritage in Cartersville and Bartow County. The museum also has artifacts related to science in motion with motorized vehicles and a recent library in the museum space.

Georgia Aquarium   (Atlanta, GA)

Whale sharks, belugas, and rays. oh my! Those are just a few of more than 100,000 animals from 500+ species that can be found at the Georgia Aquarium. Looking for mystery? Visitors to the aquarium can see a giant squid specimen, on loan from the National Museum of Natural History. Recently, the VP of Guest Services at the aquarium visited NMNH and met with the Ocean Hall educators and curators to talk about collaboration ideas in the future. And, two Affiliations team members recently made the trip from Washington, D.C., to the aquarium and documented it in a recent blog. Didn’t get a chance to see it? Click here to read about their adventure and become a fan of Smithsonian in your Neighborhood, our Facebook page, to see the photo album.

 

Sounds of Iraq in Michigan

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Oud virtuoso records for Smithsonian Folkways

Oud virtuoso records for Smithsonian Folkways

If you happen to be in the Detroit area on October 1, be sure to stop in at our Affiliate, the Arab American National Museum (AANM) in nearby Dearborn, to hear Smithsonian Folkways, Grammy-nominated, oud virtuoso Rahim Alhaj.  Alhaj performs in conjunction with the opening of the museum’s new Connecting Communities exhibition and as part of the ongoing Global Thursdays performing arts series.

Alhaj is considered one of the world’s masters of the oud, a pear-shaped, stringed instrument, often seen as the predecessor of the western lute.  Born in Iraq, Alhaj studied at the prestigious Baghdad Conservatory of Fine Arts, under the renowned Munir Bashir.  His opposition to the rule of Sadadam Hussein led to imprisonment and thirteen years of exile in Jordan and Syria before coming to the United States in 2000 under a UN refugee resettlement program. Now a resident of Albuquerque, New Mexico, Alhaj teaches, composes, and maintains an active performing schedule throughout North America and around the world.

The Smithsonian Folkways recording When the Soul is Settled: Music of Iraq, featuring Alhaj and Lebanese-born percussionist Souhail Kaspar, received a 2008 Grammy nomination in “The Best Traditional World Music Album” category.  The Los Angeles Times called the album “a convincing affirmation of an embattled area of the world,” and another critic likened Alhaj’s oud playing to “god breathing life into clay.”

AANM was established to bring the voices and faces of Arab Americans to mainstream audiences, and works to dispel misconceptions about Arab Americans and other minorities. Opened in 2005, the museum has received widespread acclaim for its architecture, exhibitions, and educational programming.

We look forward to the upcoming event when the museum and the musician join forces for what guarantees to be an unforgettable evening.

Smithsonian Folkways, the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution offers Affiliates savings on recordings at www.folkways.si.edu. Enter code SIAFFILIATE during checkout and save 10% on any purchase. From the Oud mastery of Rahim AlHaj and other international music to traditional American folk music from Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, and children’s favorites by Ella Jenkins and Elizabeth Mitchell, Smithsonian Folkways presents a world of sound that is “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

Dive into Deep Space

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A glimpse at the Black Holes exhibition.

a glimpse into the Black Holes exhibition

Black holes are regions in space with gravity so powerful that nothing can escape, and where time and space are warped beyond our understanding. A new traveling exhibition from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics will guide visitors on a journey to the edge of these strange objects to discover how the latest research is turning science fiction into fact, challenging our notions of space and time in the process.

Created by educators and scientists at the Center for Astrophysics (CfA), Black Holes: Space Warps & Time Twists is an exploration of the most mysterious and powerful objects in the universe. It opened at the Boston Museum of Science, and is now available to travel.

Project director Mary Dussault explains, “In this exhibition, we wanted to use the inherent fascination of black holes as a compelling vehicle to engage museum visitors in the larger story of how scientific discovery works–and how science is connected to human curiosity, imagination and culture.”

The interactive stations in the 2,500-square-foot exhibition address a number of questions:

    What is a black hole?
    Where are they?
    How do we find black holes if they are really black?
    What would happen if you were sucked into one?

One station allows visitors to experience their own black hole adventure. Using one of three “excursion pods,” visitors will embark on a fantasy “adventure vacation” to the black hole at the center of our own galaxy. As they make their way toward this “deep space dive,” travelers explore the phenomena around the black hole, including warped space, the slowing of time, and the dangerous magnetic fields and radiation that could leave them stranded on their cosmic adventure.

The exhibition is being traveled by the Association of Science – Technology Centers, and is available to Smithsonian Affiliates at the members’ price. Affiliates also receive exclusive access to CfA staff, including a special lecture from a Smithsonian scientist working with the Chandra X-ray Observatory (the world’s best black hole hunting machine); and the opportunity to collaborate with educators from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory to offer a special teacher workshop to their local school-based audiences, among other programming. 

Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics is a joint collaboration between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Harvard College Observatory. CfA scientists, organized into six research divisions, study the origin, evolution and ultimate fate of the universe.

what can your toaster teach you?

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Design your Life

“Design Your Life is an utter pleasure, like a delicious tray of warm brownies that also happen to be nutritious.” – Kurt Andersen, author

 

Design is not my thing.  It’s embarrassing to admit, but I’d sooner jump out of a plane than wander through a shop like Target or IKEA where rows and rows of modern gadgets remind me that I’m just not chic enough.  I have a feeling I’m not the only one.  So in my search for uniqueness in an overwhelmingly mass-produced world, I found Design Your Life: The Pleasures and Perils of Everyday Things by Ellen and Julia Lupton (St. Martin’s Press, May 2009). 

 

Ellen and Julia argue that design is more than the stuff we buy at these high end stores or the modern look that moves products at Target and IKEA.  It’s about critical thinking and looking at the world and wondering why things work and why they don’t.  It’s about finding the beauty in the mess of everyday life. 

 

Covering the pitfalls of the modern toaster, the challenges of a ‘smart’ kitchen, what’s wrong with rolling luggage, and why no one wants to read your blog, this thoughtful book examines the highs and lows of everyday design in a brainy and delightful way that is sure to leave you thinking differently.

 

And now Affiliates can have the opportunity to meet Ellen Lupton in person!  Ellen is curator of contemporary design at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City and director of the Graphic Design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.  She is interested in traveling to Affiliates to speak about design to anyone who will listen.  Contact your Smithsonian Affiliations Outreach Manager today to see about inviting Ellen to your museum.

 

Read the review in the Washington Post.  Or even better, read the blog that inspired the book. 

grab your compass

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historyexplorer.americanhistory.si.edu


Affiliates Plimoth Plantation and the Senator John Heinz History Center extend their reach through Smithsonian’s History Explorer and Thinkfinity!

Smithsonian’s History Explorer is a gateway to innovative, standards-based online resources for teaching and learning American history.  History Explorer is designed and developed by the National Museum of American History, a partner in Verizon’s Thinkfinity.org consortium of leading national education experts. The National Museum of American History is an integral part of Verizon’s Thinkfinity.org consortium. 

Teachers need only to visit Thinkfinity.org to search free educational resources from all of the partners. Thinkfinity is a free, comprehensive digital learning platform for high-quality education content, and serves as a portal for millions of American teachers, parents, and students.  The site makes it easy for educators to enhance their classroom instruction with lesson plans, interactive activities, and other online resources.

Now, the unique resources of two Smithsonian Affiliates will be added to History Explorer and will be Smithsonian recommended resources on Thinkfinity.org.  You Are the Historian, from Plimoth Plantation, investigates the first Thanksgiving and what really happened at the 1621 harvest celebration.  The Heinz History Center’s Worlds in Motion examines the complexities of interaction among eastern American Indians, colonists and Europeans from pre-contact through colonial times.

Affiliates, do you have exemplary or unique materials on American history that you would like to share?  To nominate your resource or website, or to find out more about the process, please contact your outreach manager. 

climate change online conference

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Ginkgo biloba  Ginkgo biloba

The Smithsonian addresses the global challenge of climate change in a range of ways, including through exhibitions and scientific research. 

From September 29 through October 1, 2009, the Smithsonian will offer an education online conference on climate change to allow teachers and the general public to participate in the Institution’s investigations, meet and question Smithsonian curators and scientists, and deepen our understanding of this critical issue.  Alongside Smithsonian scientists and curators, you’ll look at the issues surrounding climate change from the perspectives of science, history, and art. Registration is free, and now open.  

The conference is broadly organized around three topics: Evidence, Impact, and Response to climate change.  Participants will sample  some fascinating Smithsonian research–everything from an artist’s attempts to document sustainability issues, to a paleoclimatologist’s findings about prehistoric climate change and why it matters, to a discussion about how polar bears are faring in our warming world. 

Curators, researchers, and educators from the Archives of American Art, the National Museum of American History, the National Museum of the American Indian, the National Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, and the National Zoo will conduct twelve different live sessions, and several other units will deliver content in a “virtual exhibit hall.”  The conference features talks, interactives, and resources such as lesson plans and classroom activities, to help make this knowledge as accessible and usable as possible. (See the full agenda.)

 Affiliations is pleased to acknowledge the participation of educator Paisley Cato from the Western Center for Archeology and Paleontology, our Affiliate in Hemet, California.  Paisley worked side-by-side with Smithsonian educators throughout the summer to develop educational materials to complement the conference.

How can Affiliates be involved?  Like the virtual conference on Abraham Lincoln which took place in February (replay at smithsonianeducation.org/lincoln), Affiliates are encouraged to act as hosting sites for shared viewing and discussion with their  local area teachers, educators, and the scientific community.  Follow and comment on the climate change blog, or follow updates on Twitter (#SIClimate) and Facebook (Smithsonian Education).