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.

Rice Northwest Museum of Rocks and Minerals (Hillsboro, OR)
Rice NW Museum of Rocks and Minerals announces new affiliation with Smithsonian
Harvey goes on to say that the affiliation “confirms that [the Rice Museum] meets the high standards required to assist our schools and community in earth science education. It assures that visitors and supporters of the museum can have confidence in the quality and content of the exhibits, plus enjoyment in viewing fine minerals, fossils, meteorites and lapidary specimens.”

The Pinhead Institute (Telluride, CO)
Rock talk
Jessica Tenenbaum, left, a program manager for the Pinhead Institute, presented the Smithsonian Institute’s webcast “Mineral Dependence: Gemstones to Cell Phones” Thursday at the Wilkinson Public Library. The webcast featured Smithsonian geologist Michael Wise explaining different types of minerals, and was geared toward students.

National Museum of American Jewish History (Philadelphia, PA)
Why Albert Einstein, the Genius Behind the Theory of Relativity, Loved His Pipe
And yet, as the 60th anniversary of Einstein’s death approaches on April 18, the pipe itself is not currently on display among the science holdings of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington. Instead, as proof of its popularity, it’s at the National Museum of American Jewish History, a Smithsonian affiliate in Philadelphia, for several years.

College Park Aviation Museum (College Park, MD)
Smithsonian curator to give presentation at College Park Aviation Museum
Dr. Andrew K. Johnston, geographer and curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, will present “Beyond GPS: Navigation on Earth and in Space” at the College Park Aviation Museum

South Carolina State Museum (Columbia, SC)
‘Happy Hubble 25’: State Museum to celebrate space telescope’s 25th anniversary
The event will feature a live-stream webcast from the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, in which guests will hear from NASA subject matter experts about the shuttle missions needed for launching and servicing the Hubble Space Telescope.

Museo del Canal Interoceánico de Panamá (Panama City, Panama)
Anacostia Community Museum examines connections between Metro DC Panamanians and Panama
“Bridging the Americas’ is a timely exhibition because it connects communities across the oceans through diverse personal stories of Washington, D.C., area residents,” said Curtis. “It expands our representation of our local community and engages our visitors in collective reflection about their notions and experiences of community as well.”

Kenosha Public Museum (Kenosha, WI)
Get Out: Here’s lookin’ at you, Earth!
The panels on display locally came from a larger-scale Smithsonian Institution show. When Andersen contacted the Smithsonian, they sent the smaller set of poster-sized prints. Andersen added information from the United States Geological Survey, which she said offers context about the history of map making.

National Inventors Hall of Fame
Three-Day Innovation Event Series To Honor The Nation’s Most Creative Minds On May 11-13
“I am so happy that the National Inventors Hall of Fame was invented. Otherwise I would not have the wonderful opportunity to host this three-day celebration of American inventiveness,” said Mo Rocca, Emmy winning CBS Sunday Morning correspondent and Host of CBS The Henry Ford’s Innovation Nation. “My hope is that the genius of these innovators and visionaries will rub off on me so that one day I will invent something worthy of induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.”

History Colorado (Denver, CO)
History Colorado brings Apollo 8 to Denver in April
Dr. Michael Neufeld, Senior Curator in the Division of Space History at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, will be in Denver for two talks on April 21.

The People Who Weren’t Kidding (Huff Post Latino Voices blog written by Eduardo Diaz, Smithsonian Latino Center)
As for museums, there have been a precious few exhibitions on the subject, which is why I was thrilled to see History Colorado, a Smithsonian affiliate, recently open El Movimiento: The Chicano Movement in Colorado at its flagship venue in Denver.

The Mexican Museum (San Francisco, CA)
Berkeley’s CLAS, Mexican Museum in new cultural partnership
The Center for Latin American Studies at UC Berkeley has formed a partnership with the Mexican Museum in San Francisco, a Smithsonian affiliate, to bring innovative cultural programming to a wider audience in the Bay Area and throughout California.

North Carolina Museum of History (Raleigh, NC)
And … action! N.C. Museum of History exhibit highlights 100 years of filmmaking in the state
More than 100 artifacts are borrowed from the Cape Fear Museum and 13 are on loan from Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

Museum of the Rockies (Bozeman, MT)
What’s the Army doing with dinosaurs?
April 11, 2014, Montana State University’s, Museum of the Rockies hosted a public sendoff of the Wankel T. rex on a journey to represent Montana’s Dinosaur Trail to the nation and the world at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History becoming the “Nation’s T. rex.” As promised, exactly one year later, another T. rex specimen entrusted to the Montana museum goes on public display … and in massive form.

VIDEO (NBC Montana)

Associate curator at National Museum of the American Indian to speak at MSU March 31
Joe D. Horse Capture, an associate curator for the Smithsonian Institution at the National Museum of the American Indian, will give a lecture at Museum of the Rockies on Tuesday, March 31, as part of Montana State University’s President’s Fine Art Series. Horse Capture is an MSU alumnus and a member of the A’aninin (Gros Ventre) Tribe.

Japanese American National Museum (Los Angeles, CA)
Cesar Chavez portrait to go on display at Smithsonian
. Chavez died in his sleep and the photo Miyatake captured became one of the icon’s last official portraits. On Friday at 9 a.m., the photograph will be donated to the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., in a ceremony at the Japanese American National Museum.

UTSA Institute of Texan Cultures (San Antonio, TX)
Exhibition – Sikhs: Legacy of the Punjab
ITC welcomes exhibit on a growing Texan community. The Institute of Texan Cultures will host the traveling exhibit, “Sikhs: Legacy of the Punjab,” developed by the Smithsonian Institution and sponsored by the Sikh Heritage Foundation.

Smithsonian Sikh exhibit opens in SA (VIDEO)
Dr. G.P. Singh came to United States in the 1970s and admits he was the first to wear a turban here. It hasn’t been easy to raise a family and grow a thriving defense contracting business in the process, he said, but he has. “It is the fifth-largest (religion), but nobody knows about our faith,” he said. Singh said he was a catalyst for getting the first Sikh exhibit at the Smithsonian, entitled “Sikhs: Legacy of the Punjab.”

Museums of Sonoma County (Santa Rosa, CA)
Art Museum of Sonoma County set to open
Throughout its long effort to expand, the Sonoma County Museum made other improvements, becoming affiliated in 2009 with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., one of 190 affiliates in 40 states. That entitles the museum to show the Smithsonian’s traveling programs and get advice from its experts.

The Museum of Flight (Seattle, WA)
Pilots reunite on 60th anniversary of Crusader’s first flight
Adding the Crusader to the Museum of Flight’s collection “adds to the story of the transition from the propeller age to the jet age,” he said. The plane is to be displayed in the museum’s gallery at Boeing Field in Seattle. . The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum first loaned the plane to the museum in 1987, later donating it in 2004. Restoration work started in 1996.

Fully restored F-8 Crusader unveiled at Paine Field (VIDEO)
Inside the Museum of Flight’s restoration center at Paine Field, a U.S. Navy F-8 Crusader jet was unveiled. The plane had been donated by the Navy to the Smithsonian, but the Smithsonian in turn donated the jet to the Museum of Flight. The plan is to move the now restored airplane to its great gallery at the museum on the west side of Boeing Field in Seattle in mid-2016. The restoration took about 20 years with volunteer labor.