smithsonian

Verified

Smithsonian

We're more than a museum. We're 19 of them and the National Zoo. Legal: http://s.si.edu/legal si.edu

841 posts
565k followers
76 following

You can now 3D print your own president.
To celebrate the reopening of “America’s Presidents” at @smithsoniannpg, we're bringing you a new way to explore presidential portraits in 3D.
Our @smithsonian3d team scanned a selection of the exhibition’s sculptures and they’re available for you to view, download and print.
This itty-bitty bust of President Rutherford B. Hayes is from an 1876 piece by Olin Levi Warner. Swipe ➡️ to see the 3D model in action.
All 11 models—which also include Presidents Lincoln, Washington and Theodore Roosevelt—are online at 3D.si.edu.

This weekend marks one year since the opening of our @nmaahc on Sept. 24, 2016. 🎉
In that time, the museum has welcomed 2.5 million visitors.
They share their stories and reflections on the museum’s YouTube channel in the #VisitorVoices series. Watch and subscribe at YouTube.com/nmaahc. 📸: Alan Karchmer #APeoplesJourney #FlashbackFriday

This 1913 postcard was scorched by Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano.

Hawaii’s volcanoes have been a destination for adventurers since before they became part of a National Park in 1916. Tourists could arrive by passenger steamer and stay at one of the two hotels built at Kilauea Caldera. From there, the trail ran 3.5 miles down the side of the caldera and across the crater floor to the edge of its Halema’uma’u crater, where you could see lava glowing in the evening.

Visitors took sport in lowering sticks with food or souvenirs into the fissures. Some enjoyed a dinner of eggs and potatoes cooked by the volcano, while others brewed coffee or scorched postcards to mail back home.

The caldera floor is closed now, but these postcards remain in our @nationalpostalmuseum, which explores the relationship between U.S. mail and the National Park Service in their exhibition “Trailblazing: 100 Years of Our National Parks."

Back to school and back to school gardening. 🍎🌿🌻 This hand-colored glass lantern slide shows two children at a school garden show hosted by the Summit Garden Club in New Jersey, sometime around 1900 to 1920. It’s in our @smithsoniangardens’ Archives of American Gardens.

The school gardening movement developed during the political and social reforms of the Progressive Era (around the start of the 20th century). Gardens were seen as a way to get city children out of crowded and unhealthy tenements, to teach them to appreciate nature and to instill a sense of civic responsibility.

Learn more about the history of U.S. gardening in "Cultivating America’s Gardens," an exhibition by @smithsoniangardens and @silibraries, on view now at @amhistorymuseum

It looks cozy, but this tiny textile is hardly big enough to cover the couch.

Sheila Hicks’ “Kilometer 177 ½” is one of hundreds of mini tapestries she’s been weaving over more than 50 years. This one from our @cooperhewitt is less than 11 by 9 inches in size.

Hicks was among the pioneering artists whose work launched the fiber art movement in the mid-20th century. While she’s done some large projects, she’s experimented with structure and unconventional materials in her small works. This one includes strips of leather along with wool, cotton, silk and linen yarns.

The title "Kilometer 177 ½" refers to the distance between Mexico City and the ranch where Hicks lived in the 1950s.

#NewYorkTextileMonth

Happy Monday! A diver holds a porcupine fish at one of our marine labs in Panama.

Porcupine fish are covered in sharp spines, and when they’re harassed they inflate like prickly balloons. They crush clam shells and other mollusks in their beak-like jaws, which are so strong that it’s common to find them still intact in fossils that are millions of years old.

@smithsonianpanama researchers and colleagues have recently named three new species of porcupine fish from fossil jaws, even though the previously undescribed fish have been extinct for thousands of years.

Today, 18 species of porcupine fish live in tropical seas worldwide. This research—done by comparing fossil jaws to museum specimens and modern fish—hopes to explain how different species came to be in the Atlantic or Pacific sides of Panama.

To many, Selena Quintanilla-Pérez was the queen of Tejano music.
While her life was cut short at age 23, her hard-won fame spoke to a large cross-section of fans in the U.S., in Latin American markets and around the world.
Selena was born in Lake Jackson, Texas, and her music was a mix of pop, cumbia (a genre popular throughout Latin America for dancing) and contemporary Tejano—itself a fusion of Latino, American and European (polka!) musical influences.
These are Selena's motorcycle jacket and satin bustier, which are on display for the next year at our @amhistorymuseum. They help tell the story of Hispanic advertising in the American Enterprise exhibition, and show her personality, style, impact and powerful fandom.
#HispanicHeritageMonth #HHM

Shine bright like a narwhal. 💎 They're called the "unicorns of the sea," but narwhals are real animals.
They’re important to the Inuit people native to Greenland, Alaska and Canada, both for their meat and their tusks, which are valued for artistic and spiritual meaning.
This relationship between the Inuit and narwhal—along with information about its changing ecosystem—is featured in a new exhibition at @smithsoniannmnh. See "Narwhal: Revealing an #ArcticLegend” through 2019.
This page (plus sparkles) is from Die Cetaceen oder Walthiere, (1846) by H.G. Ludwig Reichenbach in our @silibraries.

Sequins are our favorite accessory this #NYFW. ✨
Nick Cave’s “Soundsuit,” 2009, in our @hirshhorn.
#FashionWeek #SmithsonianStrut

When you and your crew roll into #FashionWeek.
This page is from the fourth volume of “Le costume historique” by A. Racinet, which is in our @silibraries. It was published in 1888 but spans centuries, and is still a resource to costume designers with outfits from many regions and cultures.
We're sharing our best looks for #NYFW with #SmithsonianStrut.

This clock was knocked to the ground when a plane was crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, its hands frozen at the moment of impact.
It hung in the Pentagon helipad fire station, which was nearly taken out by American Airlines flight 77. The airplane actually struck the Pentagon at 9:38 a.m.—apparently the clock was six minutes slow.
The ceiling of the firehouse collapsed, temporarily trapping firefighter Dennis Young in the fallen debris. He later donated the clock to our @amhistorymuseum.

This pop-up book is next level.
Tauba Auerbach created this oversized book with six die-cut paper sculptures that unfold into elaborate geometric forms, some up to 18 inches tall.
It’s titled “[2,3]”—the math term for the closed interval between two and three. Each of the artist’s objects transitions between two and three dimensions, from totally flat when closed to large-scale paper sculptures.
The book is in our @silibraries, which has a diverse collection of artist-made books from the early 20th century to today.

Instagram

Download it for free.