ICYMI: Highlights from the week that was August 11 – August 24
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.
The most important thing in the news last week happened 400 years ago. We have news and analysis of the 1619 Project and much more.
Art and Design
This Native American artist should have been a household name. But he died at 31. (Review)
The Washington Post, August 21
The exhibition “T.C. Cannon: At the Edge of America” is now at the Smithsonian Institution’s New York branch of the National Museum of the American Indian, in Lower Manhattan. (Joshua Voda/NMAI Photo Services)
What if he had 30, or 50 more years? The question that haunts the work of Mozart, Keats and Basquiat also makes the work of T.C. Cannon seem, at first, tragic. Born in Oklahoma in 1946, he was a member of the Kiowa tribe, a brilliant artist and an original voice in the realm of what we now call social justice. In 1978, at age 31, Cannon was killed in a car crash, and his work, which was gaining momentum in the larger art world, began to recede into relative obscurity, admired, sometimes wistfully, by people who followed the twists and travails of Native American art. Read more.
‘The dress comes out of pain’: Patience Torlowei creates fashion from the highs and lows of modern Africa
The Washington Post, August 22
The “Esther” dress is hand-painted with images reflecting the conflicts on the African continent. (Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post)
This sleeveless gown with the hand-painted train is a conversation — about the violence man has committed against the Earth as well as the beauty that springs from it.
The dress’s dazzling bodice has a metallic glint, as if it was spun from strands of 22-karat gold. The skirt is an artist’s canvas — an achingly visceral landscape of red flames, puce-colored water, a hazy sun, gray smoke, rusted pipes and brown torsos etched with muscles. At a glance, the gown is a stunning example of one-of-a-kind fashion. But really look at it and the dress expresses the richness of Africa’s natural resources, its bloody conflicts, the blithe despoiling of its communities and the toll that such degradation takes on the people. Read more.
Trailblazing Art Dealer Andrea Rosen Has Donated Her Gallery Archives to the Smithsonian
Trailblazing Art Dealer Andrea Rosen Has Donated Her Gallery Archives to the Smithsonian
ArtNet News, August 22
Andrea Rosen==
ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH 2010==
Miami Beach Convention Center, Miami Beach, Fl==
December 1 2010==
©Patrick McMullan==
Photo – Patrick McMullan / PatrickMcMullan.com
The influential art dealer Andrea Rosen is getting a permanent spot at the Smithsonian. Or, at least, her papers are.
The veteran dealer and prominent taste-maker has donated her archives to the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art in Washington, DC. Rosen, who opened her gallery in SoHo in 1990, surprised the art world when she announced, in 2017, that she would close her spaces and stop representing living artists. Read more.
New Game Plan for a Smithsonian Showcase
Hirshhorn Museum expands modern-art offerings with more works by women and artists outside the U.S. and Europe; Japanese artist’s show ‘was a game-changer’
The Wall Street Journal, August 21
When Melissa Chiu was hired to run the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., five years ago, she took a hard look at its collection and found the holdings were strong in modern sculptors like Henry Moore but weak in works by women and anyone living outside the U.S. or Europe.
Since then, Ms. Chiu said she and her curatorial team have sought to broaden the museum’s scope by organizing shows of artists like Yayoi Kusama, the Japanese painter of polka dots whose mirrored “infinity room” installations helped to draw 1.2 million visitors to the Hirshhorn two years ago-more than doubling the museum’s typical annual attendance. Read more: New Game Plan for a Smithsonian Showcase – WSJ – 8.21.19.
1619 Project
A Brief History of Slavery That You Didn’t Learn in School
Four hundred years after enslaved Africans were first brought to Virginia, most Americans still don’t know the full story of slavery.
The New York Times, August 19
Sometime in 1619, a Portuguese slave ship, the Sao Joao Bautista, traveled across the Atlantic Ocean with a hull filled with human cargo: captive Africans from Angola, in southwestern Africa. The men, women and children, most likely from the kingdoms of Ndongo and Kongo, endured the horrific journey, bound for a life of enslavement in Mexico . Almost half the captives had died by the time the ship was seized by two English pirate ships; the remaining Africans were taken to Point Comfort, a port near
Jamestown , the capital of the English colony of Virginia, which the Virginia Company of London had established 12 years earlier. The colonist John Rolfe wrote to Sir Edwin Sandys, of the Virginia Company, that in August 1619, a “Dutch man of war” arrived in the colony and “brought not anything but 20 and odd Negroes, which the governor and cape merchant bought for victuals.” The Africans were most likely put to work in the tobacco fields that had recently been established in the area. Read more: A Brief History of Slavery That You Didn’t Learn in School – The New York Times – 8.19.19
How the 1619 Project Came Together
Since January, The Times Magazine has been working on an issue to mark the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved people arriving in America. Now, it includes a special section, a multipart audio series and more.
The New York Times, August 18
Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the scenes insights into how our journalism comes together. Read more.How the 1619 Project Came Together – The New York Times – 8.19.19
The 1619 Project details the legacy of slavery in America
PBS News Hour, August 18
Four hundred years ago this month, the first enslaved people from Africa arrived in the Virginia colony. To observe the anniversary of American slavery, The New York Times Magazine launched The 1619 Project to reframe America’s history through the lens of slavery. The project lead, reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones, joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss. Watch the full report.
The 1619 Project and the stories we tell about slavery (Analysis)
Columbia Journalism Review, August 18
LAST NIGHT, AT THE EVENT SPACE of The New York Times building, a collection of Black journalists, poets, and museum curators announced their intention to tell the truth about slavery. Announcing the debut of The 1619 Project, a special issue of the Times magazine published with additional material in the newspaper, Nikole Hannah-Jones, a staff writer, told the crowd, “This project is, above all, an attempt to set the record straight. To finally, in this 400th year, tell the truth about who we are as a people and who we are as a nation.” She went on, “It is time to stop hiding from our sins and confront them. And then in confronting them, it is time to make them right.” Read more.
History, Culture and Education
African American Museum Founding Director to Launch Book Tour
The Washington Informer, August 20
Lonnie Bunch, courtesy National Museum of African American history and Culture.
Newly appointed Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution Lonnie Bunch will embark on a national tour to discuss his new book “A Fool’s Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump.” Read more.
The tour, which kicks off Sept. 19 in Chicago, takes Bunch to seven cities across the country, with more dates to be announced next year. Read more.
Celebrate Julia Child’s 107th Birthday With a Trip to Her Kitchen
Adult field trip, please.
Southern Living, August 16
Photo: AARON RAPOPORT/GETTY IMAGES
Want to cook like Julia Child? Best of luck. Want to see how Julia Child cooked? Head on over to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., where you can view the cooking legend’s real-life kitchen from her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Yesterday would have marked Child’s 107th birthday, and as The Kitchn pointed out, fans can honor her legacy by traveling to the Smithsonian’s FOOD: Transforming the American Table 1950–2000 exhibit. There, you’ll find her kitchen as the opening of the exhibit, filled with cooking tools, appliances, art, and decor pieces just as they were in the original. Read more.
Enslaved Africans landed in Virginia in 1619. USA TODAY is committed to telling the story, past and present
USA Today, August 22
Tucker Family
Nichelle Smith, an investigations team editor at USA TODAY, recalls attending a lecture at the Library of Congress in early 2018 where she listened to scholars discuss the landing 400 years ago of enslaved Africans at the British colony of Virginia.
A name soon caught her attention: “Angela,” among the first Africans brought to Virginia in 1619. Angela survived the first leg from Angola on a slave ship, was taken hostage by British pirates and eventually sold to the commander of Jamestown Island. Read more.
Most slave shipwrecks have been overlooked—until now
400 years after slavery began in the United States, black scuba divers are searching for ships that carried enslaved Africans to the Americas.
National Geographic, August 22
Diving into the unfolding history of wrecked slave ships (Opinion)
A National Geographic explorer searches for forgotten wrecks that conceal family histories buried underwater.
National Geographic, August 22
Bei Bei’s 4th Birthday
Bei Bei celebrates his 4th birthday. Photo by ROshan Patel
Bei Bei the giant panda celebrates last birthday at National Zoo before China move
CBS News, August 22
Bei Bei the giant panda turns four
Reuters, August 22
National Zoo’s giant panda, Bei Bei, turns 4 but soon headed back to China
Good Morning America, ABC News, August 22
Science and Technology
National Space Council Meeting
Vice President Pence chaired the sixth public meeting of the National Space Council at the Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly,…
C-SPAN, August 20
Read the transcript and watch the video.
National Air and Space Museum shares update on $250m renovation project
The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum has shared an update on its $250 million project to transform its exhibitions and renovate the exterior and interior of the entire attraction.
Blooloop, August 21
Photo courtesy National Air and Space Museum
As part of a seven-year project, all 23 galleries and spaces will be reimagined at the National Mall building in Washington, DC.
More than 5,200 artefacts will be moved and preserved, and more than 1,400 new objects will be put on display at the museum, which is creating new spaces for discovery and STEAM learning. Read more.
NASA Data Says Rocky Exoplanet ‘May Resemble Moon or Mercury’ After Breakthrough Light Detection
Forbes, , August 20
This artist’s illustration depicts the exoplanet LHS 3844b, which is 1.3 times the mass of Earth and orbits an M dwarf star. The planet’s surface may be covered mostly in dark lava rock, with no apparent atmosphere, according to observations byNASA/JPL-CALTECH/R. HURT (IPAC)
Astronomers have been able to get a rare glimpse of the surface of a rocky exoplanet orbiting a star almost 50 light years beyond our solar system.
It’s all thanks to data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, which was able to detect light from the planet LHS 3844b. This exoplanet is located 48.6 light-years distant and has a radius 1.3 times that of Earth. It orbits a small, cool M dwarf star, the most common star in the Milky Way galaxy.
This is the first time Spitzer data has been able to reveal the atmosphere of a terrestrial world around an M dwarf star. Read more.
Fossil Hunters Found Bones From an Ancient Whale… and Then They Saw the Bite Marks
Gizmodo, August 22
The whale fossils.
Photos courtesy Carlos Jaramillo
There was tremendous turmoil at the top of the water’s surface. An island of flesh, once living and swimming gracefully through these ancient seas, bobbed silently, at times yanked violently to the side or jolted upward by forces below it. Read more.
Various Subjects
Museum Day: More than 1,600 institutions across the country are free Sept. 21
USA Today, August 21
More than 1,600 museums nationwide will be opening their doors for free on Sept. 21 in honor of Museum Day.
It’s an annual event organized by Smithsonian Magazine to celebrate cultural institutions and museum-goers across the country from Los Angeles to New York and from Hawaii to Alaska. It encourages museums, galleries and historic sites to allow free entry just as the Smithsonian Institution’s Washington, D.C.-based facilities do year-round. Read more.
David Koch, billionaire industrialist who influenced conservative politics, dies at 79
The Washington Post, August 23
David H. Koch, a billionaire industrialist and philanthropist whose fortune and hard-edge libertarianism had a profound effect on American politics while making him an uncommonly polarizing figure, died Aug. 23 at his home in Southampton, N.Y. He was 79. Read more.
‘Healing Day’: Virginia marks pivotal moment when enslaved Africans landed
USA Today, August 22
Terry E. Brown, Superintendent of the Fort Monroe National Monument poses next to a historical marker that signifies the spot of the first landing of Africans in America 400 years ago at Fort Monroe in Hampton, Va., Thursday, Aug. 15, 2019. (Photo: Steve Helber, AP)
NORFOLK, Va. – Four hundred years after American slavery and democratic self-rule were born almost simultaneously in what became the state of Virginia, ceremonies will mark the arrival of enslaved Africans in the mid-Atlantic colony and seek healing from the legacy of bondage that still haunts the nation.
Yet the weekend ceremonies in Tidewater Virginia will unfold against the backdrop of rising white nationalism across the country, racist tweets by President Donald Trump, and a lingering scandal surrounding the state’s governor and a blackface photo. Read more.
As Politics Creep Into Philanthropy, Beneficiaries Come Under Fire
Charitable organizations can find themselves targets of protests caused by the actions of their benefactors.
The New York Times, August 16
Not so long ago, philanthropy was an area where politics were left at the door. Conservatives and liberals on a philanthropic board could agree to disagree behind closed doors, but the public paid little attention as hospitals, cultural institutions and universities expanded thanks to gifts from the wealthy.
But at a time of heightened tensions over partisan views, charitable organizations can find themselves targets of vocal dissent. Read the full article: As Politics Creep Into Philanthropy Beneficiaries Come Under Fire – The New York Times – 8.16.19
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Posted: 26 August 2019
