Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

National Museum of American History

Rebecca Lukens (National Iron and Steel Heritage Museum, Coatesville, Pennsylvania)

How Rebecca Lukens Became the Nation's First Woman Industrialist

A sudden tragedy thrust Rebecca Lukens into the family business and into history, making her the first woman to run an iron mill in the United States

Robert Abbe's hourglass (NMAH)

Curing Cancer with a Single Gram of Radium

How a group of women gave radium as a gift to America

Title page to Garrard Conley's workbook from the gay-conversion camp Love in Action (NMAH)

The History of Getting the Gay Out

Conversion therapy made being different dangerous

Leo Baker's personalized skateboards (NMAH)

How LGBTQ Skateboarders Have Carved Out a Place at the Park

The Smithsonian has collected from members of the diverse and fiercely dedicated LGBTQ skate community

Transgender flag designed by Monica Helms (right), and friends. The flag's stripes represent the traditional pink and blue associated with girls and boys and white for intersex, transitioning, or of undefined gender. Helms served in the United States Navy and became an activist for transgender rights in the late 1990s in Arizona where she grew up. She designed the flag in 1999. (NMAH)

Can an Object Be Gay? LGBTQ Collecting

Curator Katherine Ott reflects on collecting and interpreting LBGTQ material culture.

Speaker’s card advertising Walker’s services as a lecturer. Walker described herself as

Mary Walker, the Original "New Woman"

Walker described herself as "the original new woman," referring to an emerging term for an independent woman who stood up for herself, regardless of social roles.

Alice Tetsuko Kono in her Women's Army Corps uniform, around 1943 (NMAH)

Why Japanese American Alice Tetsuko Kono Joined the WAC During World War II

Japanese-American Alice Tetsuko Kono served a country that considered her an "enemy alien" and enlisted with the Women's Army Corps during WWII

Photograph for a Coca-Cola ad featuring Selena, 1994. Photo by Al Rendon. (NMAH)

How Do We Remember Selena?

Three women on the National Museum of American History staff share their personal connections with Selena and discuss why her legacy matters not just to them but to many Americans.

Rendon working on a photoshoot with Selena, 1994. Photo courtesy of Rick Tolar. (NMAH)

How an Advertising Photographer Created Some of the Most Iconic Images of Selena

Who wouldn't want to share a Coke with Selena?

Categories
Archive

Page 2 of 2