Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

American History Museum

How the Heated, Divisive Election of 1800 Was the First Real Test of American Democracy

A banner from the Smithsonian collections lays out the stakes of Jefferson vs. Adams

Fuselage from Flight 93, Shanksville, Pennsylvania, September 11, 2001

Remembering 9/11, From a Scrawled Note to a Scrap of Fuselage

How objects both ordinary and extraordinary help us reflect on the devastation

What Does a Beer Historian Do?

The American History museum’s latest job opening made headlines. But what does the job actually entail?

Lisa Kathleen Graddy and Jon Grinspan, curators with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History

How Do Smithsonian Curators Decide What to Collect at the Political Conventions?

For Smithsonian’s Lisa Kathleen Graddy and Jon Grinspan, it’s trying to guess what people of the future will want to know about 2016

Ten-year veteran of the Smithsonian's protective services office, Sargeant Nadia Tyler is master of the wildly popular Pokémon Go.

Gotta Catch ‘Em All on the National Mall

Sergeant Nadia Tyler, a security guard at Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, is collecting Pokémon creatures daily

NOW co-founder Muriel Fox says: “There’s still a need for a women’s movement. We can’t do it as individuals, each of us working for our own interests. We get much further if we work together."

The NOW Button Takes Us Back When Women’s Equality Was a Novelty

At the half-century mark, for the National Organization for Women it is still personal—and political

By the “dawn’s early light,” Key saw the huge garrison flag, now on view at the National Museum of American History, waving above Fort McHenry and he realized that the Americans had survived the battle and stopped the enemy advance.

Commentary

Where’s the Debate on Francis Scott Key’s Slave-Holding Legacy?

During his lifetime, abolitionists ridiculed Key’s words, sneering that America was more like the “Land of the Free and Home of the Oppressed”

A prototype gene gun developed by Dennis McCabe and Brian Martinell in 1986 delivered new genetic material into the cells of plants.

Age of Humans

How Roundup Ready Soybeans Rocked the Food Economy

This 1980s-era “gene gun” fired the shot heard around the world

Associate Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor at the National Museum of American History discusses the dining traditions at the Supreme Court.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor Dig Into the History of Food at the Supreme Court

The American History Museum and the Supreme Court Historical Society brought the justices together to share tales from the highest court

Studying Bacon Has Led One Smithsonian Scholar to New Insights on the Daily Life of Enslaved African-Americans

At Camp Bacon, a thinking person’s antidote to excess, historians, filmmakers and chefs gather to pay homage to the hog and its culinary renown

Blair's Snow White Hair Beautifier

Old Cosmetics Made New Again Through the Art of Digitization

Arsenic Complexion Wafers? A whole new world of yesteryear cosmetics just got a refresh

Freedmen's Hospital Nurses, 1930

Do You Recognize Anyone in These Historical Photos? The Smithsonian Wants to Know

The American History Museum calls on the public to select images and identify subjects in photos pulled from the museum’s archives

March on Washington, August 28, 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial

How the Redesign of U.S. Money Shows the Power of Protest

A Smithsonian curator notes how a heavy dose of social activism prompted the U.S. Treasury to honor historic social and political movements

Bottles of the two triumphant vintages 1973 Chateau Montelena chardonnay and 1973 Stag's Leap Wine Cellars cabernet sauvignon are now held in the Smithsonian collections.

That Revolutionary May Day in 1976 When California Wines Bested France’s Finest

Forty years ago, a Copernican moment took place in viniculture when the world realized the sun didn’t always revolve around French wines

Several of Minnijean Brown-Trickey’s school items, including a notice of suspension and the dress she designed for her high school graduation, are now held in the collections of the National Museum of American History.

Women Who Shaped History

A Member of the Little Rock Nine Discusses Her Struggle to Attend Central High

At 15, Minnijean Brown faced down the Arkansas National Guard, Now Her Story and Personal Items are Archived at the Smithsonian

Prince designed and used this 1989 custom-made Yellow-cloud electric guitar, built by the Minneapolis firm Knut-Koupee. It features his personal symbol at the top and on the side of the fingerboard.

Trending Today

Beyond Raspberry Berets: What Prince Left Behind

From portraits to guitars, The Artist’s legacy lives on at the Smithsonian

Trending Today

It’s Official: Harriet Tubman Will Grace the $20 Bill

The famed Underground Railroad Conductor will appear on the front of the $20 bill, among other changes to U.S. currency

This conception of jazz as a means of bringing people together is manifested nowhere better than in Benny Carter (above, 1986).

It’s Springtime and Jazz Is In Bloom

This year’s Jazz Appreciation Month celebrates the singularly talented alto saxophonist Benny Carter

Wayne Shorter and McCoy Tyner at Shorter's April 29, 1964 session for "Night Dreamer" at the Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

These Rarely Seen Images Show Jazz Greats Pouring Out Their Hearts

Frank Wolff’s gritty portraits, the hallmark of Blue Note Records, became a visual catalog of jazz in action

Don Cheadle stars as Miles Davis in the new film Miles Ahead.

Smithsonian Jazz Expert Gives Liner Notes to the New Miles Davis Biopic

The American History Museum’s James Zimmerman dives into Miles Davis’ sound and style

Page 25 of 31