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Cultural Preservation

From Welcome San Francisco Movie Makers by Dr. Frank S. Zach

Celebrating Home Movie Day

Is there really no such thing as a boring or banal home movie?

The famous chariot race form Ben-Hur before and after the restoration.

Restoring Ben-Hur: Catherine Wyler Reminisces About her Father’s Biggest Film

A million-dollar restoration will help introduce the Oscar-winning film to a new audience

The Indian-detour (1926)

Out Where the West Begins

A new boxed DVD set examines the history of the West in films

A poster for the musical Stormy Weather

Celebrating the Nicholas Brothers

A compilation tribute to the extraordinary dance team of Fayard and Harold Nicholas

Still from Fuji (1974)

Remembering Robert Breer and Donald Krim

Looking at the careers of an avant-garde animator and a crucial film distributor

Emil Jannings in Ernst Lubitsch's The Loves of Pharaoh

Lost and Found: HBO and Ernst Lubitsch

A periodic update of film preservation projects

Frame enlargement from Le Voyage Dans La Lune/A Trip to the Moon

A Trip to the Moon as You’ve Never Seen it Before

One of the landmark films in cinema can now be seen in color

It's tempting to find hints of Hitchcock's future style in the set design and lighting for The White Shadow.

Behind the Lost Hitchcock Film

Found in a New Zealand archive, the White Shadow offers a glimpse into early film history that extends beyond the famous director

The peak of La Danta—one of the world's largest pyramids—pokes through the forest canopy. "All this was abandoned nearly 2,000 years ago," says archaeologist Richard Hansen. "It's like finding Pompeii."

El Mirador, the Lost City of the Maya

Now overgrown by jungle, the ancient site was once the thriving capital of the Maya civilization

"You didn't learn your history, you lived it," says Cornelia Bailey, who grew up on Sapelo.

Holding on to Gullah Culture

A Smithsonian curator visits a Georgia island to find stories of a shrinking community that has clung to its African traditions

Of the 14 murals at Holy Trinity Cathedral, only three survived, including The Baptism of Our Lord, by Castera Bazile, and The Last Supper, by Philomé Obin.

About the Smithsonian Institution-Haiti Cultural Recovery Project

About the Smithsonian Institution-Haiti Cultural Recovery Project

Ancient Pyramids Around the World

No matter if the civilization was Mesopotamian, Egyptian, or Mayan, its legacy today is in part marked by towering pyramids

India's Golden Temple at Amritsar—destroyed and rebuilt over centuries of strife—is to Sikhs what Mecca is to Muslims.

Saving Punjab

A Sikh architect is helping to preserve cultural sites in the north Indian state still haunted by 1947’s heart-wrenching Partition

In 7 B.C., at a point along the Via Aurelia, the Romans erected a monument to the emperor Augustus.

Via Aurelia: The Roman Empire’s Lost Highway

French amateur archaeologist Bruno Tassan fights to preserve a neglected 2,000-year-old ancient interstate in southern Provence

Suits like these worn in 1966 by Buzz Aldrin and Jim Lovell (right) were made to resist the extreme conditions of space travel for only a short period.

After Space, Saving Suits, Boots and Gloves

The spacesuits that kept U.S. astronauts alive now owe their survival to one woman

"I still wonder why that young woman gave up her seat. It's not as if our bodies bear visible proof of our years."

Do Not Go Gentle

The feisty man’s guide to aging anything but gracefully

The 13th century Tripitaka Koreana features 81,258 wooden blocks thought to be the world's most complete collection of Buddhist texts.

Preserving the World’s Most Important Artifacts

The Memory of World Register lists over 800 historic manuscripts, maps, films and more to help raise funds for preservation

The New York Public Library maintains the world's largest collection of tobacciana, materials related in some way to tobacco's history, use, and mystique.

Libraries’ Surprising Special Collections

Tucked away in libraries across the country are unexpected archives and world-class treasures

Now ancient Famagusta, tucked into a modern city of 35,000 people, is largely forgotten, except, perhaps, as the setting for Shakespeare's Othello.

Endangered Site: Famagusta Walled City, Cyprus

Once located in the midst of high-volume shipping lanes, a forgotten city with multiple European influences could be lost forever without an intervention

In 1908, the whaling industry collapsed and Herschel Island was deserted.

Endangered Site: Herschel Island, Canada

An abandoned island off the coast of the Yukon Territory holds a unique place in the history of the Pacific whaling industry

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