Who will be chosen? The decision is yours.

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Rendering for the future Only in America gallery.

Rendering for the future Only in America gallery.

 

Thanks to Ilana Blumenthal, Public Relations Associate at the National Museum of American Jewish History, for this guest post.

 

My first vote is going to the Marx Brothers. That’s an easy one. Their quick wits and dry humor have filled both my childhood and adulthood with laughter, and to me, humor is one of the greatest contributions one can make to society. I can’t forget Richard Rodgers or Stephen Sondheim. At the age of 27, I have found that their music and words have taught me more about the world, history and human nature than textbooks ever could have and with much more color and passion. Additionally, I have lived my life as a committed Zionist, so Golda Meir or Henrietta Szold also make my list of the top 18 American Jews that I feel have made the biggest contribution to society. Who will make yours?

 

The National Museum of American Jewish History launched a website, https://onlyinamerica.nmajh.org/, that asks the public to help select who will be included in our Only in America® Gallery/Hall of Fame, which will be a signature component of the core exhibition when the new Museum opens in November 2010. Situated on the first floor of the Museum, the gallery will examine the choices, challenges and opportunities that have been faced by a remarkable group of American Jews on their paths to accomplishment through featuring major film productions, original artifacts, and an interactive database.

 

Visitors to the website will have the opportunity to vote on a list of 218 candidates in the fields of Arts and Entertainment; Business and Philanthropy; Literature; Performance; Politics, Law and Activism; Religion and Thought; Science and Medicine; and Sports. Participants can also cast write-in votes. Voting ends Thursday, August 6, so hurry.

 

Irving Berlin. Levi Strauss. Steven Spielberg. Albert Einstein. Rebecca Gratz. Sandy Koufax. Molly Picon. Which Jewish Americans should be recognized in a major museum exhibition? The National Museum of American Jewish History is inviting you to tell us what you think. Let us know.

 

The Museum is constructing the new 100,000–square-foot, five-story building on Independence Mall in Philadelphia. It is dedicated to telling the still-unfolding story of Jews in America, who embraced freedom with its choices and challenges as they shaped and were shaped by our nation. The Museum envisions its new home as a place that welcomes all people, inviting them to discover what they have in common with the Jewish experience in America, as well as to explore the features that make this history distinctive.

 

 

 

Which one will you choose? 

Which one will you choose?

 

 

 

 

Let’s Eat

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Season 2 starts on Monday July 12!

Season 2 starts on Monday July 12

On Monday July 12, Smithsonian Networks launches the second season of its signature series, “Stories from the Vaults” with a look at the incredible, edible Smithsonian.  It features Native cuisines and collections of the Pacific Northwest at the American Indian Museum (think: salmon!), and the origins of the American coffee break in the American History Archives (enter: Krispy Kreme).  The final segment is on the mechanics of eating and the toll food takes on our teeth, featuring our very own Baltimore Affiliate, the National Museum of Dentistry.  Go behind the scenes with the Dentistry Museum’s curator Scott Swank, as he shows off historic extractors and toothbrushes and other items from their collection.

To watch the whole show, click here.  Bring your appetite, and enjoy!

Textile Revolution!

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What do sheep and baseballs have in common?

Textile Revolution: An Exploration through Space and Time

Textile Revolution: An Exploration through Space and Time exhibition entrance

 

 
WOOL!

WOOL!

This is one of the many intriguing questions answered in the new permanent exhibition, Textile Revolution: An Exploration through Space and Time at the American Textile History Museum in Lowell, Massachusetts.

On June 19, the Museum cut the ribbon on their own revolution.  Having been closed for two years, the Museum reopened with updated, interactive displays that tell the history of American textiles, up to the present.  “Most people have no idea how their lives are shaped by textiles – far beyond the clothing they wear,” said Jim Coleman, the Museum’s President and CEO.  Indeed, the exhibition moves the visitor though spinning yarn in the home in pre-industrial times (hence, where we get the term “spinster“) to contemporary textiles that encompass cars, high-performance bicycles, and “sharkskin” suits worn by Olympic swimmers.

Carbon fibers woven into a high-performance bicycle frame.

Carbon fibers woven into high-performance bicycle frames.

Lowell Mayor “Bud” Caulfield called the renovated Museum “a jewel in Lowell’s cultural landscape.”    Through its innovative approach to illuminating the history of textiles and the importance of textiles to the scientific, medical, aeronautic fields and beyond, the Museum is truly a jewel in America’s cultural landscape.  With tens of thousands of textiles spread across at least 6 Smithsonian museums, we can’t wait to get started collaborating with the Museum to enhance the story through our Affiliate partnership.

Kudos to the Museum – its staff, board, donors and supporters – on a job well done!

Museum stakeholders cut the ribbon to the new Museum and permanent exhibition.

Museum stakeholders cut the ribbon to the new Museum and permanent exhibition.

 

The Museum really knows how to celebrate!

The Museum really knows how to celebrate!

 

 

Masterpiece on the Move

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A masterpiece by one of America’s most renowned 19th-century landscape artists will soon make its way west from the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., to the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, the only Smithsonian Affiliate in Wyoming.

Thomas Moran’s The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (1893 – 1901) will be on loan from the Smithsonian American Art Museum as part of the Whitney Gallery of Western Art’s 50th Anniversary celebration. The massive painting–more than eight feet high and fourteen feet long–arrives in early summer for a four-month stay and will be unveiled June 21.

“This is truly a glorious, iconic painting of Yellowstone that first appeared in Chicago at the 1893 Columbian Exposition,” says Alan Simpson, former U.S. Senator from Wyoming and the historical center’s chairman of the board of trustees. “What a rare and extraordinary privilege for our visitors to connect with Thomas ‘Yellowstone’ Moran’s Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and then to see the landscape that inspired it as they travel in Yellowstone.”

Indeed, Moran (1837 – 1926) is often considered the pivotal figure in efforts to make Yellowstone a national park. In 1871, he accompanied F.V. Hayden’s geological survey of the area as guest artist and worked closely with photographer William H. Jackson. Ostensibly, Moran painted the extraordinary sights of Yellowstone, and Jackson’s images proved they existed–in case there was any question about Moran’s interpretation.

The renovated gallery opens June 21, 2009. Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone will be on view through October 31, 2009.  Follow the countdown toward the opening of the Whitney Gallery of Western Art by visiting the historical Web site at www.bbhc.org/wgwa.  For more images from the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s flickr stream, click here.

 

Congratulations Buffalo Bill Historical Center!

 

“An Open Smithsonian, all around”

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An interesting blog post by Gunter Waibel of RLG Programs, (a group which supports research institutions in collaboratively designing the future) commenting on the Smithsonian’s hot topic – how to “diffuse knowledge” in the 21st century with the creation of a web and new media strategic plan: 

As part of the process for arriving at the Smithsonian’s Web and New Media strategic plan, Michael Edson created a Wiki on which Smithsonian staff discuss their points of view in plain site of anybody who is interested in listening in. This experiment in radical transparency is in and of itself noteworthy, and so is the content which surfaces on the Wiki. Encouraged by @mpedson’s tweet, I particularly took note of two short talks arguing in favor of open access to museum content. The first paper (titled “Publish Everything!”) is by Betsy Broun (Director, Smithsonian American Art Museum); the second paper (titled “Make Content Freely Available”) is by Lauryn Guttenplan (Associate General Counsel at the Smithsonian). Both papers were presented as part of the Smithsonian 2.0 Forum on April 21, 2009. One reason why I found these notes remarkable is because those who are speaking represent the class of professional who oftentimes is perceived to be scuttling plans for making data more openly available – not in this instance!

Here are the outtakes I would have marked yellow if I had actually printed the pieces instead of saving a tree and reading online.

Publish Everything! – Betsy Broun (Director, Smithsonian American Art Museum)

I’m here today to advocate for publishing everything online. To the extent allowable by law, the Smithsonian should digitize and post online all our images and data, as well as the ideas and speculations that have accumulated in our files. We should let users help us sort and correct the information, and comment as they wish, from their own perspective.

What every expert knows [. ] is that knowledge is always advancing but never wholly correct. What we publish is the latest current knowledge, but tomorrow will dawn, with incriminating evidence that some of what we posted yesterday already is wrong.

[D]espite [our] good work, each year we actually lose ground, as many times more data and information is constantly coming in to our files, to remain buried there.

Why not push everything in our files online, including old outdated information and new information that hasn’t yet been validated? We’ll never have the perfect expert in every subject, but somewhere out there, that expert exists.

Bran Ferren argues that raw data is alive in all its imperfections, inviting testing and response. Authenticated data, by contrast, is more or less inert and monolithic. It commands respect but invites little interaction or questioning.

Make Content Freely Available – Lauryn Guttenplan (Associate General Counsel at the Smithsonian)

Position: We are a public entity and non-profit and we should make our content freely available to the extent we can.

It’s ironic, I think, that a lawyer – the one person most likely to tell you all the reasons you can’t give away content freely – is here to advocate this position, but my views on this issue have changed over the past 18 months [. ].

[The] Digital Media Use Working Group conducted a survey of SI staff. Over 600 of you responded and 91% agreed that digital assets should be available, and 84% said there should be unrestricted access for educational and non-commercial use.

[W]hat about the vast amounts of content that we can make available but choose to restrict because we want to use it exclusively or because a third party wants to use it for commercial purposes? In the survey, over 70% of you opposed making our content available for commercial purposes.

The Powerhouse Museum in Australia recently experimented with an open source initiative and, not only did they not lose licensing revenue, early statistics have shown that open access actually drove sales upward through awareness of the collection which, in turn, generated knowledge about other museum resources.

I have come to believe that control represents the world of Smithsonian 1.0 and if we want to keep up, remain relevant, fulfill our mission and even achieve greatness, we need to let go. So let’s control our destiny, as Secretary Clough said earlier, not our content.

I encourage you to explore the discussions on this Wiki, and follow the Smithsonian as they negotiate pressing issues facing not just museums, but cultural heritage institutions across the LAM spectrum.

Follow Gunter at hangingtogether.org

Affiliates at AAM

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AAM logo

Affiliates provided alot of insight at the recent AAM meeting in Philadelphia.

Cassie Chinn, Deputy Executive Director of the Wing Luke Asian Museum in Seattle, presented in a session titled Community-Curated Exhibit Programs.  She described how the process of incorporating the community into every exhibition process is time-consuming and complicated, but that the Museum has made that conscious and ultimately rewarding decision to focus its entire operation toward community engagement and empowerment.  Wing Luke has lots of information about organizing their process, which you can find here.  As a testament to their leadership in this area, the Wing Luke was mentioned at other community-curation sessions as a model example of how to do it right. 

Ken Bubp, Chief Operating Officer at Conner Prairie talked about the historical site’s transformation in the face of declining attendance when they decided to overhaul their approach to the visitor experience.  He, and the others on the panel entitled, Achieving Impact: Intentionally or by Chance, described the difficulties and rewards of facing down staff entrenchment and ultimately challenging and empowering staff to turn an organization around. 

Carrie Gustavson, Director of the Bisbee Mining and Historical Museum in Arizona spoke at a lively panel, Beyond the Gala: Quirky New Ways to Engage Donors.  She talked about taking donors into mining pits to find turquoise, and not underestimating the potential support of volunteers.  The point of many of the panelists’ comments was that donors will often go to lengths and do things a Museum might not expect – like traveling on dangerous research trips or not-so-glamourous digs.  So be adventuous!

And of course, the two Philadelphia Affiliates proved to be wonderful hosts to the whole AAM community.  The African American Museum hosted a panel about going green, and shared tips and advice from their current renovation and installation of “Audacious Freedom,” a new permanent exhibition about African Americans in the city between 1776-1876.  The National Museum of American Jewish History also shared a plethora of lessons learned in the construction of their new $150 million building on Independence Mall.  Among the expert advice: seize unexpected opportunities, even if it throws a project off the planned course in the process.

If you haven’t seen the video produced especially for the meeting by our museum colleagues in Philadelphia, it was wonderful.  Check it out on YouTube.

And you – what did you most take away from Philadelphia this year?