Art and Design

Few who walk past the Bethesda Fountain in New York City’s Central Park know the history behind the angel statue, standing high atop the fountain with wings outstretched. This sculpture, called Angel of the Waters, has been the backdrop for many movies and TV shows.

The Edo period (1600-1868) in Japan was a time of prolonged peace. Ruling under an isolationist foreign policy (Sakoku) and with no civil wars, the Tokugawa Shogunate government focused on social and political stability, and securing infrastructure. They created and regulated five major roads, boarding houses and transportation systems in order to strengthen central control over the daimyōs (Sankin kōtai — a governmental policy requiring the daimyō to live in their domain for one year and in Edo the alternate year).

Three Cheers for 100 Years of Fine Arts research at the Smithsonian!

This is the sixth in a series of posts about the Art Deco resources at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum library. Each post will highlight primary resources which contain the styles and designs of the Art Deco era.

Whether you’re headed back to school, back to work, or back to your home office or dining room table this fall, we’ve compiled a few fun treats and created this Digital Book Bag for you! Piece together digital jigsaw puzzles, download free coloring pages, or browse a few favorite books from our Di

This is the seventh and final post in a series about the Art Deco resources at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum library. Each post will highlight primary resources which contain the styles and designs of the Art Deco era.

You asked and we delivered. A new set of digital jigsaw puzzles is finally here! We’re so glad you enjoyed our last round of puzzles and hope you find these equally entertaining.

The summer of 2020, as part of a Smithsonian Libraries’ Wikidata Pilot Project and in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Library offered an all-virtual internship project.

Another season, another set of digital jigsaw puzzles! Ahead of National Puzzle Day (January 29th), we’ve put together one more round of images for you to piece together. They include a few snowy scenes as well as some warmer images to brighten your winter months.

Calling all coloring enthusiasts! #ColorOurCollections is back for 2021 and we have a brand new coloring packet just for you. We’ve teamed up with our colleagues at Smithsonian Institution Archives to bring you ten coloring pages to help break your winter boredom. Download them now!

To celebrate National Library Week and the start of spring, we’ve put together another round of digital jigsaw puzzles! We hope these cheerful florals brighten your screens and bring you a few moments of peace, minus the pollen.

This post was contributed by Natalia Addison, 2020 spring intern with the American Art and Portrait Gallery (AA/PG) Library and a recent Master of Science in Information and Library Science graduate from Clarion University.

The Smithsonian Libraries and Archives’ Adopt-a-Book program has brought donors, Smithsonian staff, and treasured collection items together for twelve years. This year our annual event went virtual in a series of Adopt-a-Book Salons. Across four evenings, we were able to showcase 77 items from our collections. We featured selections from the Smithsonian Institution Archives for the first time, giving our attendees a look into our incredible archival materials.

Anthropologist Zelia Maria Magdalena Nuttall was an expert in Mesoamerican people and artifacts. A remarkable Mexican American scholar, she helped change the conversation around pre-Columbian cultures. Many of her publications are held in the collections of S

Calling all coloring enthusiasts! #ColorOurCollections is back for 2022 and we have ten new coloring pages just for you. Whether you want to bring polychromatic glory to old black-and-white photos or scribble in vintage fashion plates, you’ll find a little something for everyone in our new packet. Download it now!

This is the third part of a series sharing Smithsonian Libraries and Archives’ work with linked open data and Wikidata. For background and overview of current projects, see the first two posts in the series.

This post was contributed by Isabella Buzynski, 2022 Summer Scholars intern with the American Art and Portrait Gallery (AA/PG) Library. Isabella is currently attending the University of Michigan School of Information for the Master of Science in Information program.

What does it take to paint a wildflower that blooms for a single day in a deep forest? For Mary Vaux Walcott, it involved spending up to seventeen hours a day out of doors with her paintbox to capture the shape, movement, and colors of delicate petals and leaves.

“It’s alive!” During the spooky season celebrated around Halloween, decorations and costumes of classic pop culture creatures abound, like Dracula, the Wolfman, and Frankenstein’s monster himself. Our modern conception of Frankenstein is a loveable zombie, tall and dopey with green skin and spiky hair, bolts and stitches. Originally published in 1818, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus actually tells the story of Dr.

We’re excited to announce a new round of internships for Summer 2023.  These opportunities provide hands-on experience in a range of subject areas and are open to both undergraduate and graduate students. Each unique project offers a chance to explore current topics in archives, libraries, and information science and learn from experienced Smithsonian Libraries and Archives staff.

These internships include a variety of on-site and remote options, part-time and full-time. All include a stipend. The application deadline is February 13th, 2023.

In the series called “The ABCs of the Corcoran Artist Files” the American Art and Portrait Gallery (AA/PG) Library will explore artists through the materials from the recent Corcoran Vertical File Collection donation by featuring artists whose surnames begin with that letter. This time we are looking at the artists whose last names start with L.

This exhibition and blog post were curated and written by Joana Stillwell.

It’s interesting to think of how much of our everyday culture goes unnoticed, lost to time and simple decomposition. The newspaper someone tossed yesterday turns to mush in a landfill pile. The gilt invite you saved from your alma mater’s 15^th reunion is lost in a pile of documents, kids’ art projects, and bills. The sticky note with your to-do list gets stuck to the bottom of your shoe and wears away as you walk to work one day.

My name’s Dawson, and over the summer I worked as an intern at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Library in DC. I’m currently an Art History and Visual Culture student at Bard College. I applied to the internship last spring with only a little archival experience under my belt, and no idea of how I would live in DC if I even got the position. It was a total leap of faith, and I’m still a little surprised I landed on two feet.