One Smithsonian

Addressing complicated issues and global problems such as zoonotic diseases, climate change, and the rapid loss of natural resources resulting from human activities and population pressures requires work that spans disciplines and organizational boundaries. The Smithsonian’s potential to tackle complex challenges, as well as to innovate in design, technology, and other pursuits, is greatest when our museums, galleries, Zoo, research centers, education centers, and mission-support offices work together as One Smithsonian.

This section of the Dashboard highlights forward-thinking, interdisciplinary, and cross-Smithsonian activities that tackle pressing issues and chart new paths that the Smithsonian is particularly well suited to address due to its unique combination of science, history, art, and culture experts and global partnerships. Learn more at Torch, Smithsonian Global, Smithsonian Insider, and Smithsonian.com. Join the conversation at Second Opinion.

Mother Tongue Film Festival

The Smithsonian’s Recovering Voices Initiative, a collaboration of the National Museum of Natural History, National Museum of the American Indian and Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, will present the Mother Tongue Film Festival, February 21 to 24. Through a curated selection of 23 films and audiovisual experiences from 34 countries in 62 languages, the festival celebrates language revitalization around the world and explores the relationship between language vitality and personal and community well-being.

Local Washington, D.C. brass ensemble Crush Funk celebrated the opening of the Year of Music from the terrace of the Smithsoni

Smithsonian Year of Music

The government shutdown in January did not deter the Smithsonian Year of Music’s kickoff of 365 days with over 1,000 music and sound-related events. Singer Tanglewood Sue and D.C.-based brass ensemble Crush Funk were among the performers who delighted visitors to the National Mall on January 1st. The Institution-wide initiative includes performances, lectures and workshops – not to mention sounds of the universe captured by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and sounds of animals documented at the National Zoo.

Sojourner Truth, Randall Studio (active 1865 - 1875?) c. 1870, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Major NPG Exhibit Tells "Her Story"

The National Portrait Gallery’s upcoming exhibition, “Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence,” is a centerpiece of the Institution-wide American Women’s History Initiative “Because of Her Story.” The exhibition, opening March 29 with more than 120 portraits and objects spanning 1832 to 1965, reveals the women and organizations often overlooked in the complex narrative of women’s suffrage in the United States – contributions of the radical women in antislavery societies, women activists of the late nineteenth century, the “New Woman” of the turn of the century, and the militant suffragists of the 1910's.