Tag Archive for: national museum of american history

Featured video: Smithsonian Firearms in Cody

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Sharing a great article from By Katharine MacKnight at KULR-8 TV in Billings, Montana.

In 1876, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History established the National Firearms Collection in Washington, DC. It’s the home to nearly 7,000 artifacts. Sixty-four of them are now on display at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West Firearms Exhibit. It’s one of the largest collections of firearms to come out of the Smithsonian.

“It’s for people who love firearms and know a lot about them and also for people who don’t know a lot and would like to come in and learn why it’s important to American history,” says Ashley Lynn Hlebinsky, Firearms Curatorial Resident at the Buffalo Bills Center of the West Firearm Exhibit.

“Journeying West: Distinctive Firearms from the Smithsonian” is an exhibition at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. It was a carefully researched and planned out process that took Curator Warren Newman years to bring together.

Read the entire article here- https://www.kulr8.com/story/22879382/smithsonian-firearms-in-cody
KULR-8 Television, Billings, MT

coming up in affiliateland in may 2013

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May is a busy time in Affiliateland! 

CALIFORNIA
The Japanese American National Museum will open SITES’ American Heroes: Japanese American WWII Nisei Soldiers and the Congressional Gold Medal, 5.4. The museum will also host the National Portrait Gallery’s traveling exhibition Portraiture Now: Asian American Portraits in Los Angeles, 5.11.

bbhc

Detail of a historic firearm to be displayed in Cody, Wyoming.

WYOMING
64 artifacts from the National Museum of American History’s firearm collection go on display at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, 5.4.

FLORIDA
The Polk Museum of Art will host the Mayfaire Arts Festival. Beverly K. Cox, formerly Exhibits Coordinator for the National Portrait Gallery, will serve as the jurist for the museum’s annual two-day arts festival in Lakeland, 5.10. 

St. Augustine Lighthouse & Museum will host a public program on the Art of Boatbuilding, featuring curator Douglas Herman from the National Museum of the American Indian. He will present a public  demonstration on boatbuilding by Pacific Islanders in St. Augustine, 5.18.

NORTH CAROLINA
The Schiele Museum of Natural History and Lynn Planetarium will open an exhibition entitled Mammal Safari, featuring 25 mounted specimens on loan from the National Museum of Natural History, in Gastonia, 5.18.

MARYLAND
College Park Aviation Museum will host their second Youth Capture the Colorful Cosmos workshop in College Park, 5.19.

Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Museum hosts a reception for all Affiliate staff during the American Alliance of Museums annual meeting in Baltimore, 5.21.

ramp

Native skateboard culture is headed to Connecticut

CONNECTICUT
The Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center hosts SITES’s Ramp it Up: Skateboard Culture in Native America in Mashantucket, 5.25.

TEXAS
Fort Worth Museum of Science and History is hosting SITES’ Elvis at 21, featuring 40 Smithsonian artifacts in Fort Worth, 5.23.

MAINE
Abbe Museum opens SITES’ IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas, in Bar Harbor  5.23.

 

 

 

 

 

 

affiliations conference preview: spaces for learning

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Do you operate an education center at your museum, or thinking about it?  Join us at the Affiliations National Conference on June 10-12  to meet colleagues who are opening or running new spaces for learning on the Smithsonian campus.  Through tours of these spaces, frank discussions with colleagues, exchanging resources and research, and hands-on activities, discover and share what makes an education center such a vital place in a museum.

Affiliations staff is currently working with the following museums to feature their education spaces:qurious

  • The National Museum of Natural History will be opening Q?RIUS in 2013, a new interactive 10,000 square foot programming space.  Q?RIUS will have access to a 20,000 specimen collection representing all departments of the museum, innovative programming and distance learning opportunities.
  • The National Museum of the American Indian’s imagiNATIONS activity center invites families to explore how Native peoples have adapted to natural environments with innovation.  Visitors can explore different kinds of transportation (snowshoes and skateboards), homes (tipis, adobes, igloos), hands-on activities (basket-weaving, Native percussion), and more.
  • The National Museum of American History is undergoing a major renovation that will result in new education spaces when they reopen in 2015.  Affiliates can talk to the staff about their planning and prototyping process, the “Object Project” and demonstration spaces, and explore possible collaboration opportunities.
  • The National Air and Space Museum’s Moving Beyond Earth gallery is an immersive space that puts visitors “in orbit.”  Affiliates can enter their Shuttle mock-up to learn about life in orbit (including the space toilet), or play the interactive SpaceFlight Academy, a group quiz that tests flight readiness.
  • The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden’s very popular ARTLAB+ is a digital media studio forARTLAB teens.  Staff will share how they provide access to professional technology and art, coupled with mentorship, to develop a community of young creators and innovators.   

Come to the Affiliations National Conference in Washington, D.C., on June 10-12, and bring your own experiences with education spaces to share with Smithsonian and Affiliate colleagues in these hands-on tours.  See you there!

The Smithsonian Affiliations National Conference is for current Affiliates only. If you are interested in becoming an Affiliate, please contact Elizabeth Bugbee for more information.

coming up in affiliateland in february 2013

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FLORIDA
The Mennello Museum of American Art opens the African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era and Beyond exhibition, with 100 artworks on loan from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, in Orlando, 2.1.

PENNSYLVANIA
The Heinz History Center opens 1968: The Year that Rocked America exhibition which contains three artifacts on loan from the National Air and Space Museum, in Pittsburgh, 2.2.

CALIFORNIA
The Sonoma County Museum opens SITES’ Mail Call exhibition in Santa Rosa, 2.10.

The Agua Caliente Cultural Museum opens its Native FilmFest with National Museum of the American Indian guest programmer Elizabeth Weatherford in Palm Springs, 2.27.

OHIO & PENNSYLVANIA
The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center and the Heinz History Center will take part in the National Youth Summit on Abolition, in partnership with the National Museum of American History, in Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, 2.11.

what’s up in Affiliateland for December 2012 and January 2013

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Events in Affiliateland for December 2012-January 2013

MASSACHUSETTS
The American Textile History Museum will host SITES’ Suited for Space in Lowell, 12.08. 

NORTH CAROLINA
The North Carolina Transportation Museum will host SITES’ Journey Stories in Spence, 01.05.

TEXAS
The National Postal Museum will host the EdLab! Professional Development workshop at the International Museum of Art and Science in McAllen, 01.09.

LOUISIANA
The National World War II Museum will host SITES’ Congressional Gold Medal in New Orleans, 01.11. The museum will also participate in the National Museum of American History’s Let’s Do History public program in New Orleans, 01.15.

FLORIDA
Kevin Gover, Director of the National Museum of the American Indian, will deliver remarks and observations on Native American art and identity at the Frost Art Museum & The Wolfsonian in Miami, 01.12.

Roger Launius, space curator at the National Air and Space Museum, will present a public lecture on the history and possible futures for human and robotic spaceflight at the Museum of Arts & Sciences in Daytona Beach, 01.19. 

GEORGIA
The David J. Sencer CDC Museum will host Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum’s Design with the Other 90%: CITIES exhibition in Atlanta, 01.22.

it may be cold outside…

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But it’s warm at these Affiliates! While you’re on winter break, check out the Smithsonian in your neighborhood: 

The Smithsonian Community Coral Reef is on view at the Putnam Museum in Davenport, Iowa. The coral reef, composed of thousands of crocheted natural forms, creates a version of the Great Barrier Reef with loopy “kelps,” fringed “anemones,” crenellated “sea slugs,” and curlicue “corals.” On loan from the National Museum of Natural History. 

Photo credit: Putnam Museum

Photo credit: Putnam Museum

Imagine you too are standing on a sun-dappled lawn picking wildflowers just like the figure in Dear Fay, one of several painted ceramic sculptures on loan to the Springfield Museum of Art in Springfield, Ohio, for their exhibition Jack Earl: A Modern Master- A Retrospective. On loan from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, through January 6, 2013.  

Photo credit: Smithsonian American Art Museum

Photo credit: Smithsonian American Art Museum

Native Words, Native Warriors tells the remarkable story of Indian soldiers from more than a dozen tribes who used their Native languages in the service of the U.S. military. On view at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, through March 2013. Organized for travel by the Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition Service. 

Courtesy U.S. Marine Corps

Courtesy U.S. Marine Corps

Sick of dreary white, winter days? Head to the Polk Museum of Art in Lakeland, Florida, for Vibrant Color: Vintage Celebrity Portraits from the Harry Warnecke Studio, a collection of color photographs of celebrities who rose to fame at a time when color photography was in its infancy. Organized by the National Portrait Gallery, the exhibition is on view until January 12, 2013. 

Photo credit: Harry Warnecke Studio for The Daily News/National Portrait Gallery

Photo credit: Harry Warnecke Studio for The Daily News/National Portrait Gallery

While you’re in Florida, stop by the Frost Art Museum in Miami. On view until January 13, 2013 is Reflections Across Time: Seminole Portraits, a collaboration with fellow Affiliate Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum in Clewiston, Florida. Showing more than 150 years of portraits of Seminole leaders and tribal members, the exhibition features works of art from the National Museum of the American Indian, National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.  

Photo credit: Frost Art Museum

Photo credit: Frost Art Museum

In 1898, New York photographer Gertrude Käsebier watched the grand parade of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, on its way to Madison Square Garden. Inspired by what she saw, she photographed the Lakota (Sioux) travelling with the show in her 5th Ave studio. The result was a set of prints that are among the most compelling of Käsebier’s celebrated body of work. See Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Warriors: Photographs by Gertrude Käsebier at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane, Washington, through February 9, 2013. On loan from the National Museum of American History and includes artifacts from fellow Affiliate, Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming.

Photo credit: Dean Davis

Photo credit: Dean Davis Photography

Mittens, boots, puffy jacket and scarf may work in our winter weather, but imagine what astronauts had to prepare for when venturing into space! Suited for Space, an exhibition from the Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition Service and the National Air and Space Museum, explores the evolution of spacesuit development from the first quarter of the 20th century until the dawn of the shuttle era. On view at the American Textile History Museum in Lowell, Massachusetts, until March 3, 2013.

Phot credit:Sun/Bob Whitaker

Phot credit:Sun/Bob Whitaker

Is the Smithsonian in YOUR neighborhood? Find an Affiliate here.