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Smithsonian Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage

Performers wave, forming a ring around a red, circular stage, with a packed audience and rigging hanging above.

Let’s Clown Around! The Circus Comes to the Smithsonian This Labor Day Weekend

A person dances, turquoise and brown skirt flying and twisting around them, with a drummer and singer performing on the sides.

Through ‘By the People,’ the Smithsonian and Humanities Councils Unite to Explore 250 Years of the United States’ Cultural Life

Two protesters hold signs saying "You're on Abenaki land" and "This is Abenaki land."

This Land is Whose Land? Interrogating the Shortcomings of Settler Protest

Gray stone etched with the words, I am innocent.

Why This Monument Offers Some Humanity to the Tragedy of the Salem Witch Trials

Suffragists stand holding a banner quoting Susan B. Anthony: "No self respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party that ignores her sex."

The Lasting Legacy of Suffragists at the Lorton Women’s Workhouse

Two civilians look at a poster featuring the face of Martin Luther King Jr., his head depicted beneath the words 'Nonviolence... Our Most Potent Weapon.'

MLK's Unswerving Commitment to Nonviolent Activism

Bowls of citrus fruits including lemons, limes, and oranges, are arranged on a striped, bright green table cloth. Behind the bowls are jars filled with various superfoods including Goji berries.

La Cultura Cura: How Latinos Are Reclaiming Their Ancestral Diets

(Photo courtesy of Sandra Chandler)

A Folkways Challenge Reveals a Love for Sacred Harp Singing in Georgia

(Photo by Authenticated News/Archive Photos/Getty Images)

Are You a Friend of Dorothy? Folk Speech of the LGBTQ Community

Elexia Alleyne. Photo courtesy of the artist

Coming of Age in Poetry: An Interview with Elexia Alleyne

(Photo courtesy of Mariachi Reyna de Los Angeles)

The Quarter-Century Reign of Mariachi Reyna

Anto Kilislian prepares lahmajoun at the 2018 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. (Photo by Sonya Pencheva, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives)

Food and Longing in the Armenian Diaspora

Photo courtesy of Alicia D. Williams

How Alicia D. Williams Is Reviving Storytelling for Black Children

Making crates to leave the camp, September 1945, Heart Mountain, Wyoming. (Illustration by Estelle Ishigo, courtesy Estelle Ishigo Collection, Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation. Gift of Bacon Sakatani in Memory of Arthur and Estelle Ishigo)

What They Carried When the Japanese American Incarceration Camps Closed

Jim McDowell holds his jug, “Emmett Till.” (Photo By Rimas Zailskas, courtesy of Asheville Made Magazine)

Facing History: Lessons from the Potter’s Wheel

Three of Yosl Cutler’s surviving puppets: two Jewish characters and one Russian. These were constructed circa 1933. (Photo courtesy of the Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research)

The Life and Death of a Yiddish Puppet Theater

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