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At the Smithsonian

The View From the Big Top

Aerialist and this year’s Folklife Festival performer Dolly Jacobs didn’t have to run away to join the circus; she lived it

“These males were still alive and living around the females, they just apparently weren’t getting any of the matings, or the matings weren’t working,” says Robert C. Fleischer.

Future of Conservation

Safer Digs for Tortoises Put a Damper on Their Love Lives

A new genetic study surprised scientists who learned the males were not breeding

“The Smithsonian family stands together in condemning this act of hatred and intolerance, especially repugnant in a museum that affirms and celebrates the American values of inclusion and diversity,” wrote secretary of Smithsonian Institution David Skorton in an Institution-wide email.

Noose Found in National Museum of African American History and Culture

This marks the second such incident within a week on Smithsonian grounds

Joseph Goebbels viewing the 1937 Degenerate Art Exhibition.

Why It’s So Hard to Find the Original Owners of Nazi-Looted Art

International experts recently gathered at Smithsonian to discuss the state of international provenance research

Exclusively feeding in the wild on blood from live animals, vampire bats, native to Central and South America, can regurgitate blood in order to feed one another, though they won't do this for just anyone.

What a Vampire Bat Can Teach Us About the Economics of Friendship

A Smithsonian scientist says important lessons about making friends and sharing can be learned from these blood-sucking creatures

Multiple views of the young teen's right humerus arm bone that runs from the shoulder to the elbow show where the tumor left its mark.

Oldest Cancer Case in Central America Discovered

A young teen, who died 700 years ago, likely suffered pain in the right arm as the tumor grew and expanded through the bone

“We’ve been taxing work, output and income and subsidizing non-work, leisure and unemployment. The consequences are obvious! To Don Rumsfeld,” Arthur Laffer wrote around the graph, signing and dating his work as well.

The Restaurant Doodle That Launched a Political Movement

How one economist’s graph on a napkin reshaped the Republican Party and upended tax policy

Ask Smithsonian 2017

How Does Earth’s Geomagnetic Field Work?

You asked, we answered

"We saw kids who created hands that had solid, non-moving opposable joints," says Tim Pula (left) from the Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation .

The Innovative Spirit fy17

The Next Generation of Military Prosthetics Is Breaking New Ground

At the Smithsonian’s Military Invention Day, visitors experienced how military innovation is helping society

In 1971, Folkways Recordings released the album Raimon: Catalonian Protest Songs, and in the liner notes, Pete Seeger wrote: “Censors, in every corner of this world, tend to be shallow, literal-minded people. Raimon is a poet. There is no need to say more.”

This Catalan Folk Singer Refused to Bow to Oppression

The director of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage recognizes the lifetime work of the singer activist Raimon

DNA barcoding, as the name suggests, was designed to make identifying a species as simple as scanning a supermarket barcode.

Future of Conservation

The Key to Protecting Life on Earth May Be Barcoding It

An easier way to read DNA is helping scientists tease apart species and ecosystems in nuanced ways

65 East 125th Street, Harlem by Camilo José Vergara, 1977

Watch How One Harlem Storefront Changes Over Nearly Four Decades

The Smithsonian American Art Museum’s new exhibition goes “Down These Mean Streets”

Langston Hughes by Edward Henry Weston, 1932

Why Langston Hughes Still Reigns as a Poet for the Unchampioned

Fifty years after his death, Hughes’ extraordinary lyricism resonates with power to people

Amanda Lawrence, lead technician, collections program. With a green sea turtle Chelonia mydas

Why These Humans Are Museum Treasures, Too

A portrait photographer captured 24 staffers from the National Museum of Natural History posing with their favorite artifacts from the collections

A giraffe skin disease was first described in the mid-1990s in Uganda and evidence of the disease has been spotted in numerous other countries, including Namibia, Zimbabwe and Botswana.

Future of Conservation

How a Tiny Worm is Irritating the Most Majestic of Giraffes

They sound horrifying and look worse. A Smithsonian researcher is investigating the cause of these grotesque skin lesions

Ornithologist John Gould's illustrations of finches collected by Charles Darwin on the Galápagos Islands show the physical differences that the men relied on in dividing them into different species.

Future of Conservation

What Does It Mean to Be a Species? Genetics Is Changing the Answer

As DNA techniques let us see animals in finer and finer gradients, the old definition is falling apart

Scimitar-horned oryx calf

Spring Brings a Wave of Baby Animals to the Zoo

Seven different endangered species born so far at the National Zoo and the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute

Schwarzkopf's helmet, a PASGT, represents "how technology and innovation work together in the field of ground-forces protection,” says Frank Blazich, Jr., the Smithsonian's curator of modern military forces.

The Innovative Spirit fy17

How the Military Helmet Evolved From a Hazard to a Bullet Shield

With the development of Kevlar and advanced industrial design, soldiers are now better protected from traumatic brain injury

The First Couple head to the inauguration ceremony, Washington, DC, January 20, 1961

JFK’s Presidency Was Custom Made for the Golden Age of Photojournalism

A new exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum concentrates on the White House’s most photogenic couple

"This book was representative of an era during which colonialism and the associated conversion to Christianity oppressed the indigenous population in often violent ways,” says curator Gabriela Pérez-Báez.

The Innovative Spirit fy17

A Rare Public Display of a 17th-Century Mayan Manuscript

With the book newly digitized, scholars are reinterpreting a story of native resistance from within its pages

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