ICYMI: Highlights from the week that was Oct. 20 – Oct. 27, 2018
No one can keep up with everything, so let us do it for you. We’ll gather the top Smithsonian stories from across the country and around the world each week so you’ll never be at a loss for conversation around the water cooler.
In the season of pumpkin spice everything, we paused for a bittersweet farewell to Matthew Shepard.
The Journey to Spaceflight: A Q&A with Author Roger D. Launius
Space.com, October 23
“The Smithsonian History of Space Exploration: From the Ancient World to the Extraterrestrial Future” (Smithsonian Books, 2018), released Oct. 23.
Credit: Courtesy Smithsonian Books
Space exploration is constantly fueled by mankind’s desire to reach further and learn more about the cosmos.
A new book, “The Smithsonian History of Space Exploration: From the Ancient World to the Extraterrestrial Future” (Smithsonian Books, 2018), released Oct. 23, follows humankind’s journey to spaceflight.
From looking up at the stars with sheer wonderment to sending astronauts to the moon and launching satellites to the far reaches of the galaxy, author Roger D. Launius, a spaceflight historian, illustrates the cutting-edge advancements made in astronomy and space science. Read Samantha Matthewson’s interview with Roger Launius.
Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Gives $5 M. to Archives of American Art
ArtNews, October 25
Edward Mitchell Bannister, watercolor study from scrapbook, ca. 1890
COURTESY ARCHIVES OF AMERICAN ART, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
The Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art in Washington, D.C. has received a $5 million gift from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation. The funds will go toward the creation of an endowment for the processing and digitization of materials related to artists underrepresented in the AAA’s collections and the American canon.
Kate Haw, the director of the Archives of American Art, said in a statement, “This extraordinary gift reinforces our work to add to our existing collections on underrepresented artists and enables us to share an ever more inclusive story of American art globally. The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation’s wonderful generosity will lead to further research in under-recognized areas of our field, future exhibitions, and publications, connecting people everywhere with the stories of a wider range of artists.” Read more from Claire Selvin for ArtNews.
Yards With Non-Native Plants Create ‘Food Deserts’ for Bugs and Birds
New research finds that Carolina Chickadees require a landscape with 70 percent native plants to keep their population steady.
Audubon, October 22
A nesting Carolina Chickadee will collect more than 400 caterpillars each day. The bugs are packed with nutrients like carotenoids that growing chicks need to thrive. Photo: Douglas Tallamy
Desirée Narango has knocked on hundreds of doors in the outskirts of Washington, D.C. to make an intimate request of homeowners: permission to count and identify the trees and shrubs in their yards. Luckily for Narango, now an ecologist at the City University of New York, they almost always said yes. In her counts, she’s found the tropical fronds of banana plants, pink-tufted crepe myrtles, scraggly oaks, and hundreds of other woody plants. But her interest in the greenery isn’t that of a botanist. “We’re thinking at the scale of a bird,” Narango says.
Narango and other researchers at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute wanted to know how plants in human-managed landscapes affect the reproductive success of resident bird populations—a simple question that no one had answered before. The team’s research, published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, found only one distinction that determines if a spot is a boom or a bust for a bird population: whether it has plants native to the area. Read more from Lexi Krupp for Audubon.
Janelle Monáe and Parkland activists among winners of American Ingenuity Awards
The Washington Post, October 25
Janelle Monáe will be honored with 2018 American Ingenuity Awards from Smithsonian magazine. (Kyle Gustafson/For The Washington Post)
Singer Janelle Monáe, actor/director John Krasinski, U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith and the Parkland survivors who organized the March for Our Lives will be honored with 2018 American Ingenuity Awards from Smithsonian magazine.
The seventh annual event — one part gala, one part TED talk — will be held Dec. 5 in the Kogod Courtyard of the National Portrait Gallery and will feature winners in nine categories, including performing arts to technology.
“No matter bad things seem, how bleak, and how fraught and dangerous and strange things are, there is an American genius out there working in all these different fields, and that’s what we’re celebrating,” said Michael Caruso, editor in chief of Smithsonian Magazine. Read more from Peggy McGlone for The Washington Post.
Bringing Africa to the World
The New York Times, October 25
Gus Casely-Hayford, of London, started as the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art in February. He talks about his passion for sharing the astonishing breadth of his parents’ continent, the need to go global and digital, and his desire to renovate. This interview has been edited and condensed. Read Jennifer Steinhauer’s interview with Gus Casely-Hayford: Bringing Africa to the World – The New York Times
‘He’s moving away’: Matthew Shepard’s parents prepare to lay their son to rest at Washington National Cathedral
The Washington Post, October 25
Matthew Shepard is photographed in 1993 in Rome, Italy. (Joe Hursey/Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution)
It wasn’t until Judy and Dennis Shepard were sitting on the plane, leaving their home state of Wyoming for the nation’s capital, carrying their son’s ashes, that the feeling sank in.
“Matt’s moving away now,” Judy Shepard, 66, recalled thinking as the flight took off earlier this week.
Twenty years after their son, Matthew Shepard, was brutally pistol-whipped and left to die on a buck-rail fence in a cold Wyoming prairie, making him a lasting symbol of the gay rights movement, his parents were on their way to lay his remains to rest — in a crypt in Washington National Cathedral. Read more from Samantha Schmidt for The Washington Post.
Pumpkin spice has infiltrated America’s zoos
The Washington Post, October 25
American zoo animals are not the only ones to get the pumpkin spice treatment. Bhanu, an Asiatic lion at the London Zoo, rolls in leaves scented with what the zoo called “a special blend of warming spices” — cardamon, cinnamon and clove. (Peter Nicholls/Reuters)
From September — make that late August — through the end of the calendar year, or for as long as supplies last, no American is far from the seasonal scent of pumpkin spice.
Not even American zoo animals.
The powder is sprinkled in lion enclosures at Smithsonian’s National Zoo. It is dotted in the exhibit that’s home to Fred, an American elk at the Oklahoma City Zoo. It is dusted about the living space of bears and foxes at the Cincinnati Zoo. And these animals love it, keepers say.
But few furry creatures embrace the pumpkin spice lifestyle as enthusiastically as Bei Bei, the National Zoo’s young panda, who was introduced to the autumnal additive last year and immediately doused his head with it. His caretakers sometimes use pumpkin spice to lace a rotted log, creating a combination that Bei Bei finds bewitching. Read more from Karin Brulliard for The Washington Post.
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Posted: 6 November 2018
