Balloon weddings were once all the rage. When flight was a novelty in the 19th century, these “destination weddings” became quite the spectacle.
The Sept. 27, 1888 wedding of Margaret Buckley and Edward T. Davis drew an estimated 40,000 people, who watched as the couple took to the air after their ceremony at the Rhode Island State Fair.
Their honeymoon-by-sky hit a snag, though, when the balloon landed in a swamp that evening. The passengers had to cling to the ropes above the basket to stay out of the water—and decided to finish the trip by train.
Later, the couple reenacted their wedding for a photographer in a studio, which is how we have this photo in our National Air and Space Museum.
When it was first donated to us, few people outside Asia had seen the species, though it is recorded in early writings as smelling like “a thousand dead elephants rotting in the sun.”
Bucky’s species (originally from Papua New Guinea) targets female carrion flies as pollinators, with a flower head that has a cluster of 15 to 20 meat-colored flowers covered with fleshy projections. If that weren’t enough, it evolved to have a fragrance that matches its appearance.
When Tim Jerman was a child, he couldn’t decide whether to become a marine biologist or an artist. So he became an artist who created intricate glass sculptures of aquatic life.
For more than 100 years, no one knew how Smithsonian scientist Robert Kennicott died.
He started as part of a rowdy band of scientists who lived in the Smithsonian Castle and named themselves the megatherium club after an extinct giant sloth. When their work was done for the day, they took to drinking, having sack races down the hallways and serenading the boss’s daughters.
To start the new season of our podcast Sidedoor, we trace Kennicott’s life and uncover the mystery of his death with our modern bone detectives.
A rock concert inspired artist Debra Baxter to create her
“Devil Horns Crystal Brass Knuckles” series. This one, a lefty, is on view at
our @americanartmuseum’s #RenwickGallery, which is home to the museum’s collection
of contemporary craft and decorative art.
It’s wedding season (but you knew that). This gown was made from a nylon parachute that saved Maj. Claude Hensinger during World War II.
The pilot was returning from a raid over Japan in August 1944 when his engine caught fire. When he proposed to his girlfriend Ruth after the war, he offered her the material from the parachute that saved his life.
She worked with a seamstress to create the bodice, and used the strings on the parachute to shorten the front of the dress and create a train in the back.
It’s not even the only parachute wedding dress in our collection—it wasn’t uncommon for soldiers’ parachutes, made from fabric scarce during the war, to become wedding attire. #ontrend
This pastry princess—check out that crown!—is from the Sally L. Steinberg Collection of Doughnut Ephemera
in our National Museum of American History’s Archives Center. (Steinberg also considered herself a doughnut princess, as her grandfather Adolph Levitt was
America’s original “doughnut king,” having developed the automatic doughnut making machine and founded the modern American doughnut industry.)
In the Victorian era, whimsical seed cards like this one were all the rage, inspiring people to buy seeds and collect the cards that came with them.
Along with being collectors’ items, seed and nursery cards document the history of U.S. agricultural business and advertising. They tell a story about how American gardening has been shaped by history, social attitudes, the environment and innovation.
What story do you think this gentleman would tell?
Monday feels: Mary Jane the baby sloth, born at our
National Zoo in 1964.
Zoo staff, who hand-reared Mary Jane, named the two-toed
sloth long before it was determined that the baby was a male. He’s seen
snuggling at 9 months old in this Smithsonian Institution Archives photo.
These stunning images are a preview of the first special exhibition at our @nmaahc, which explores the stories behind more than 150 photographs and related objects from their collection.
The images, by established and emerging photographers from the 19th century to the present, show a range of American experiences. They challenge you to look beyond the surface to consider their significance in history, their cultural meaning, and your own perspective.
The first Cinco de Mayo celebrations didn’t include
margaritas, because they weren’t invented until the 1940s. By the 1970s, the margarita surpassed the martini as the most popular American cocktail.
This is the first frozen margarita machine, invented at a restaurant owned by Mariano Martinez. When blenders couldn’t keep up with the high demand for margs, he found inspiration in the 7-Eleven Slurpee machine. The original retired when
Martinez’
restaurant moved 34 years later, and now it’s in our National Museum of American History.
Cats didn’t need the internet to achieve feline fame.
Our @archivesofamericanart has a new exhibition, “Before Internet Cats: Feline Finds from the Archives of American Art,” which explores how cats are represented in rare documents like sketches and drawings, letters, and photographs from the 19th century through the early 2000s.
We decided to let the cat out of the bag…er, box with this collage postcard sent from fiber artist Lenore Tawney to filmmaker Maryette Charlton. Tawney’s postcards often featured intricate layers of found media and handwritten notes. Animals, especially cats, were a frequent motif.
While we think the whole exhibition is purrfect (we couldn’t help it), here are some of our favorite pieces from the archives:
Georges Mathieu, a French painter, embellished this oversize letter
to painter Hedda Sterne. It’s among the cat-themed correspondence from Mathieu that are in Sterne’s papers.
Cats often make ideal studio companions. They serve as sympathetic critics and elegant muses.
In this photo, Pozy the cat watches muralist Edna Reindel work in her California studio. (Pozy is also the subject of the wall mural behind them.)
Photos of artists in their studios enhance our understanding of their stories and their working processes.
Reginald Gammon was known for his evocative portraits of prominent African Americans (and not cats) but in the mid-1960s he illustrated a children’s book that chronicles the friendship between a boy and a bespectacled cat.
Thousands of sketches in the Archives of American Art offer insight into artists’ creative processes. A 1948 sketchbook of watercolor studies by muralist and children’s book illustrator Emily Barto highlights the distinct personalities of several felines—here’s one taking a cat nap.
#BeforeInternetCats is on view through Oct. 29 in the Lawrence A. Fleischman Gallery (the first floor of the National Portrait Gallery). You can also paw your way through the exhibition online.
The
“First Lady of Song,” Ella Fitzgerald, was born 100 years ago today.
We’re
celebrating the centennial of her birth and the legendary career that followed
with this portrait on view at our National Portrait Gallery. Dizzy Gillespie, on the right, is all of us as he gazes at Lady Ella in song.
The photographer, William P. Gottlieb,
learned to use a camera so that he could include images in his weekly music
column for TheWashington Post. Today, his photos of jazz
musicians from the 1930s and ’40s are regarded as invaluable visual records of
jazz’s Golden Age.
“On this Earth Day, ‘Earth Optimism’ should be more than a slogan; it should be a rallying cry for people of conscience to work together year-round in order to safeguard this beautiful planet we call home.”
— Smithsonian Secretary David J. Skorton
This weekend, we’re sharing conservation
success stories at our #EarthOptimism Summit, a first-of-its-kind gathering of more than 150 scientists, thought leaders, philanthropists and civic leaders to share and learn from each other’s conservation achievements.
Follow along on
Facebook, Twitter, or the live webcast to learn about how science is working to
solve complex problems around the globe.
