ICYMI: Highlights from the week that was Sept. 15 – Sept. 21
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.
We learned this week that we may be a bit behind on the bills—to the tune of about a billion dollars. But we’re more concerned about the loss of three billion birds.
Secretary Bunch
Smithsonian Institution Oversight Hearing
C-SPAN, September 18
Smithsonian Institution Secretary Lonnie Bunch outlined his priorities to lawmakers, one of which is to address the deferred maintenance backlog. His testimony came before an oversight hearing before the House Administration Committee. Mr. Bunch is the Smithsonian’s first African American leader. He started his post in June 2019. Watch the hearing.
Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III to Embark on National Book Tour
The Chicago Crusader, September 19
Lonnie G. Bunch III, the newly appointed 14th Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 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.” The tour kicks off in Chicago on Sept. 19 and takes him to seven cities in the U.S. in 2019, with more dates in 2020 to be announced. Read more.
How Lonnie Bunch Built a Museum Dream Team
Smithsonian.com, Sept 19
In a new book, the Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch, the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, describes the making of a museum, where the nation’s history is told in all its contradictions and complexities. (Jason Flakes) Read the excerpt
Art and Design
Portraits of Lin-Manuel Miranda, Jeff Bezos headed for National Portrait Gallery
The Hill, September 20
© National Portrait Gallery | Mark Seliger
Portraits of “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos will soon hang in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.
The annual “Recent Acquisitions” exhibit showcases 25 portraits, including individuals who have made an impact in art, business, fashion, media, medicine, music and social justice, according to a Thursday announcement from gallery. Read more.
The Amy Sherald Effect
The New Yorker, September 23
Sherald’s “A single man in possession of a good fortune,” from 2019.© Amy Sherald. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth
The subjects of Amy Sherald’s eight strong oil portraits at Hauser & Wirth impress with their looks, in both senses: striking elegance, riveting gazes. In six of the pictures, the subjects stand singly against bright monochrome grounds. (The other two works are more complicated.) They are young or youngish, attractive, stylishly dressed, and likely well-to-do—presentable people, presented. All are African-American. Should this matter? It does in light of the artist’s drive to, in her words, seek “versions of myself in art history and in the world.” Sherald, who is forty-six and lives in New Jersey, revitalizes a long-languishing genre in painting by giving portraits worldly work to do and distinctive pleasures to impart. Her style is a simplified realism, worked from photographs that she stages and takes of individuals who interest her, an approach much like that of the late, belatedly celebrated painter Barkley Hendricks. Peculiar to Sherald is a consistent nuance, in her subjects’ expressions, which can take time to fully register—it’s so subtle. There is no palpable challenge. But there’s drama, starting with that of the show’s existence. Read more.
This photo exhibition captures people in the act of speaking — during a less self-conscious time
The Washington Post, Sept. 19
Bob Adelman’s 1963 photo of Martin Luther King Jr. is featured in the National Portrait gallery exhibition “In Mid-Sentence.” (National Portrait Gallery/Smithsonian Institution/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution)
The concept of the National Portrait Gallery exhibition “In Mid-Sentence” is right there in the title. The show features 26 photographs that depict people caught in the act of speaking, whether to an acquaintance or to the nation. But the pictures, all from the museum’s holdings, are linked by a lot more than that. Read more.
History, Culture and Education
One of the last US warships sunk by a German sub during WWII reveals its secrets in eerie images from seabed
Fox News, Sept. 19
The wreck of one of the last U.S. Navy warships sunk by a German submarine during World War II is revealing its secrets in remarkable images from the seabed.
Patrol boat USS Eagle PE-56 was located by a private dive team just a few miles off the Maine coast last year, ending a decades-long mystery about the ship’s location. The ship’s bow was spotted in about 260 feet of water in June 2018 and its stern the following month. The last pieces of the wreck were found in May 2019, according to diver Ryan King of Brentwood, N.H. Read more and watch the video.
10 Essential Folk Ambums from 2019 (So far)
And folk-adjacent!
Paste, September 18
Folk music is as old as the wind. For as long as people have gathered, they’ve made noise, told stories and passed those tales down through the generations. We have certain ideas about what traditional folk music should sound like now, but it’s so much more than what Bob Dylan and Joan Baez played at Newport in the ’60s. Folk music didn’t stop after Dylan plugged in that electric guitar—folk artists have adapted to the times throughout the decades. That doesn’t make it any easier to categorize—many artists on this list could easily fit into a bluegrass box, or maybe Americana, country or roots, or maybe even rock or indie-folk. But they all carry the spirit of folksy storytelling, and they all bring acoustic instruments to life in new and exciting ways. Each of these albums arrived in 2019, making it a glorious year for folk and folk adjacent sounds. Read on for 10 essential folk albums out this year. Read more.
Construction of Native American Veterans Memorial to begin
Voice of America, September 16
Design by Harvey P{ratt/Butzer Architects and Urbanism, illustration by Skyline Ink.
This Saturday, the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in Washington will break ground on a $15 million monument to Native American military veterans, after more than two decades of planning.
In 1994, Congress passed legislation calling for the museum to build the memorial, noting that Native Americans, Native Alaskans and Native Hawaiians have a “long, proud and distinguished tradition of service” in the U.S. Armed Forces, “in numbers which far exceed their representation in the population of the United States.” Read more.
This Saturday, museumgoers will be in for a treat when admission will be free for many institutions
The Washington Post, September 16
The Audubon Butterfly Garden and Insectarium in New Orleans is one of the many museums that will offer free admission this Saturday. (Alamy Stock/Alamy Stock Photo)
Curious about engineering, Ebola or insects? You’re in luck.
On Saturday, hundreds of science museums will participate in Museum Day. The annual celebration is hosted by Smithsonian magazine, and it provides free admission to museums across the country.
The choices are seemingly endless — 131 natural history museums, 159 science museums, and 40 zoos and gardens are on the list, along with hundreds of history, art and children’s museums. Read more.
Science and Technology
Where have the wild birds gone? 3 billion fewer than 1970
The Washington Post, September 19
This April 14, 2019 file photo shows a western meadowlark in the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge in Commerce City, Colo. According to a study released on Thursday, Sept. 19, 2019, North America’s skies are lonelier and quieter as nearly 3 billion fewer wild birds soar in the air than in 1970. Some of the most common and recognizable birds are taking the biggest hits, even though they are not near disappearing yet. The population of eastern meadowlarks has shriveled by more than three-quarters with the western meadowlark nearly as hard hit. (David Zalubowski, File/AP)
North America’s skies are lonelier and quieter as nearly 3 billion fewer wild birds soar in the air than in 1970, a comprehensive study shows.
The new study focuses on the drop in sheer numbers of birds, not extinctions. The bird population in the United States and Canada was probably around 10.1 billion nearly half a century ago and has fallen 29% to about 7.2 billion birds, according to a study in Thursday’s journal Science. Read more.
Here’s what you can’t see during the National Air & Space Museum’s massive reconstruction
Seven “re-imagined” galleries will open when the first phase of work ends in 2022, but there are more closures coming
WUSA9, September 17
Families and field trips visiting the country’s most popular museum might notice something… missing. About one half of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum is now closed for a major construction project while the rest of the museum remains open.
Museum deputy director Chris Browne gave WUSA9 an exclusive tour of the work taking place since January. Once-crowded galleries are being cleared out for construction. Read more and watch the video.
Make your own Smithsonian at home
Apollo International Art Magazine, September 13
In the good old days, museum lovers used to make do with poster prints of their favourite paintings to hang in the parlour or adorn their bedroom walls. But since 2013, the Smithsonian Institution has gone one step further and offered its faithful an opportunity to create their own 3D prints of objects in its collection, by making available to download models of scores of objects in the collection. Anyone can now build their own Smithsonian in the suburbs. Read more.
Various Subjects
Smithsonian has almost $1 billion in outstanding maintenance, committee told
Buildings with outstanding repair needs include the Castle and the National Air and Space Museum
Roll Call, September 18
Cathy L. Helm, inspector general of the Smithsonian Institute, testifies before the House Administration Committee on Oversight of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington on Wednesday. (Caroline Brehman/CQ Roll Call)
The Smithsonian Institution has almost $1 billion in outstanding maintenance needs across the more than 600 facilities it oversees, an issue that concerned lawmakers at Wednesday’s House Administration Committee hearing and one that the recently appointed head of the museum complex pledged to address.
Prominent Smithsonian buildings in need of deferred maintenance — maintenance and repairs that were not performed when they should have been — include the Smithsonian Institution Building, known as the Castle, the Arts and Industries Building and the National Air and Space Museum. The $937 million backlog for fiscal 2017 is an assessment of every building it oversees, according to to Cathy Helm, inspector general for the Smithsonian Institution. Read more.
You Can Finally Visit The Washington Monument Again. Here’s What To Expect
WAMU-American University Radio, September 18
The Washington Monument has been undergoing more than $10.7 million in repairs and renovations.
Mhari Shaw / NPR
America’s best-known obelisk reopened to the public on Thursday after more than three years of construction on a new security facility and renovations to its elevator system.
The Washington Monument is again welcoming visitors up to its observation deck, where, from more than 500 feet in the air, you can see regional landmarks including the U.S. Capitol Building, National Cathedral, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, RFK Stadium, Key Bridge and other National Mall monuments. Read more.
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Posted: 24 September 2019
