ICYMI: Highlights from the week that was Sept. 29 – Oct. 5, 2019
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.
Our Superstar Secretary continues to make the news while Smithsonian women dominated the arts as the “Most Influential Women in Washington.”
Secretary Bunch
400 years later, America still has so much to learn about its racial history (Opinion by Lonnie Bunch)
The Washington Post, September 27
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture near the Washington Monument in 2016. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
In his influential treatise on race, “The Fire Next Time,” James Baldwin wrote, “To accept one’s past — one’s history — is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.” Read more.
The Smithsonian’s Lonnie Bunch: A passion for history (Video)
CBS Sunday Morning, September 29
Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution Lonnie Bunch III (left) and CBS News correspondent Chip Reid, with Charles Lindbergh’s “Spirit of St. Louis.” CBS NEWS
“Look at that plane!” said Lonnie G. Bunch III, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, of Charles Lindbergh’s “Spirit of St. Louis.” “Look how little it is. It is a tiny plane!”
Bunch is enamored of American history, and he’d like us to join him in learning from the past, for better and for worse.
“It’s my job to tell the unvarnished truth, to illuminate all the dark corners of the American past,” he said. “In a museum that’s gonna talk about difficult issues, you try to find the right tension between those stories that are gonna make you cry – ’cause you better cry – but there are also the stories that give you that resiliency, that make you smile.” Read more.
Five objects: The Smithsonian’s Lonnie Bunch and his personal attachments to artifacts in the collection (Video)
CBS Sunday Morning, September 29
As Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Lonnie G. Bunch III oversees 19 museums, 21 libraries, the National Zoo, and numerous research and education centers. And while the total number of artifacts in the Smithsonian’s collections are estimated at 156 million, Bunch sat down with CBS News national correspondent Chip Reid to discuss just five artifacts from the Smithsonian’s museums – objects that hold a profoundly personal meaning to him. Read more.
Smithsonian’s Lonnie Bunch talks new book (Video)
CBS This Morning, September 30
Historian Lonnie Bunch is the first African-American to serve as head of the 173-year-old Smithsonian Institution. He’s in charge of 19 museums, 21 libraries and the National Zoo and oversees about 7,000 employees. Bunch writes about his journey creating the museum in 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.” Bunch joins “CBS This Morning” to discuss his new book and journey to head of the Smithsonian. Watch the video.
‘I Haven’t Been Bored’: Lonnie Bunch on Leading Smithsonian (Video)
NBC4-Washington, September 27
At the helm of 19 museums, 21 libraries and the National Zoo, Lonnie Bunch certainly hasn’t slowed down since opening the National Museum of African American History and Culture three years ago. Bunch told News4’s Jummy Olabanji being secretary of the Smithsonian Institution is a humbling experience. Watch the interview.
Art and Design
Audrey Hepburn, Morgan Freeman, more round out National Portrait Gallery additions
Los Angeles Times, October 1
A new image of Audrey Hepburn has been added to the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.(Warner Bros. )
The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery unveiled on Tuesday the final images set to round out its “Recent Acquisitions” exhibition, including photos of Audrey Hepburn and Morgan Freeman.
The late “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” star, “Angel Has Fallen” actor and more notable figures will join the display, along with previously announced 2019 American Portrait Gala honorees, including “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Read more.
At the Sackler Gallery, this Buddhist statue contains multitudes
The Washington Post, September 30
This The two-foot-tall sculpture of the bodhisattva Gwaneum is the center[piece of “Sacred Dedication: A Korean Buddhist Masterpiece” at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. (National Museum of Korea/, Seoul)
On Sept. 9, a Buddhist deity arrived at the Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in a wooden crate. Well, sort of.
The two-foot-tall sculpture of the bodhisattva Gwaneum — a bodhisattva is a future Buddha who has delayed enlightenment to stick around and help humanity — was once considered a living being, says Keith Wilson, the Sackler’s curator of ancient Chinese art and the curator of a new show focusing on the statue, which made the transition to museum piece around the turn of the 20th century. The centerpiece of “Sacred Dedication: A Korean Buddhist Masterpiece,” this gilded wood statue was made in 13th-century Korea, and brought to life when monks placed religious texts and symbolic objects inside of it. Read more.
‘It’s Like Manifesting Ghosts’: Artist Stephanie Syjuco on How Textiles Can Conjure Up America’s Unsettling Past
As part of a collaboration with Art21, hear news-making artists describe their inspirations in their own words.
ArtNet News, October 3
Stephanie Syjuco. © Art21, Inc. 2019.
California-based artist Stephanie Syjuco was born in the Philippines, and has dedicated her career to exploring the ways in which history, race, and labor skew our understanding of contemporary life.
Her work often centers on labor—especially the underrepresented kind that tends to be done by women.
In an exclusive new clip for Art21, as part of its “Extended Play” series, Syjuco sits in her Berkeley studio, cutting patterns for women’s dresses in antebellum American styles. Read more.
History, Culture and Education
Access Smithsonian director Beth Ziebarth would spend her Dream Day indulging at her favorite accessible spots
In D.C. Dream Day, we ask our favorite people in the area to tell us how they would spend a perfect day in the District. Find previous Dream Days here.
The Washington Post, September 30
Beth Ziebarth. (Motoko Hioki)
After surviving a car accident at 16 that left her in a wheelchair, Beth Ziebarth had to recalibrate her life. Getting anywhere was no longer a question of when, but if it was even possible to do so.
Now, as the director of Access Smithsonian, Ziebarth, 59, spearheads efforts to ensure that those with disabilities are able to visit a Smithsonian museum or event without issue. “We provide people with disabilities with options for how they can access our content, which is important because a person with a disability is just like any other visitor,” she says. Read more.
A Multigenerational Fight for Tribal Recognition Is Almost Over
After 130 years, the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians may no longer be landless.
The Nation, September 30
A banner at the Little Shell Annual Powwow at First People’s Buffalo Jump State Park in Ulm, MT on September 12. (Gabriel Furshong)
Introducing Lost at the Smithsonian with Aasif Mandvi
Player PM, September 27
Check out Lost at the Smithsonian, a new podcast from Stitcher! Comedian and pop culture fanatic Aasif Mandvi gets up close and personal with the most iconic artifacts at the National Museum of American History. Join Aasif and his guests as they explore how vintage clothing, ratty furniture, and mismatched shoes transformed into Fonzie’s leather jacket, Archie Bunker’s chair, and Dorothy’s ruby slippers and became defining symbols of American culture along the way. Lost at the Smithsonian is out NOW – listen wherever you get your podcasts. Read more.
Science and Technology
After Summer at Ballparks, Neil Armstrong Spacesuit Statues Head to Museums
Space.com, September 26
One of the National Air and Space Museum’s 15 statues of Neil Armstrong’s Apollo 11 spacesuit as displayed as part of “Apollo at the Park” at Minute Maid Park in Houston in July 2019. (Image credit: collectSPACE.com)
Having spent the past baseball season rounding the plates, the Smithsonian is now sending its team of spacesuit statues home.
To new homes, that is.
The National Air and Space Museum is wrapping up its “Apollo at the Park” commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing by relocating its Neil Armstrong spacesuit statues from the Major League Baseball (MLB) parks where they were displayed over the summer. Read more.
3D technology recreates ceremonial pieces for Tlingit communities
Smithsonian Natural History Museum using digitization technology to create replica of ceremonial hat
CBC News, October 1
Experts used the original hat, left to make the replica, right. (Left: J. Christopher Dudar/catalog number E74339 and E74441. Right: James DiLoreto )
A ceremonial piece unveiled recently in Juneau, Alaska, demonstrates state-of-the-art replication technology.
A Tlingit clan crest hat, recreated by the Smithsonian Natural History Museum and members of the Tlingit Kiks.ádi clan of Sitka, Alaska, was welcomed back to the community as an almost-identical copy of the original in late September.
The Smithsonian says a team used a computer-controlled milling machine to replicate the sculpin red cedar hat, which has been in the Smithsonian’s collection for more than 135 years. Read more.
Various subjects
The Most Powerful Women in Washington
150 of the area’s most influential women in government, business, law, education, media, nonprofits and the arts
Washingtonian, October 1
Hirshhorn Museum Director Melissa Chiu. Photograph by Greg Powers/Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.
Senate spending bill withholds new funds for Smithsonian HQ plan
Washington Business Journal, October 3
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Posted: 15 October 2019
