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April 30, 2013
May is a busy time in Affiliateland!
CALIFORNIA
The Japanese American National Museum will open SITES’ American Heroes: Japanese American WWII Nisei Soldiers and the Congressional Gold Medal, 5.4. The museum will also host the National Portrait Gallery’s traveling exhibition Portraiture Now: Asian American Portraits in Los Angeles, 5.11.
 Detail of a historic firearm to be displayed in Cody, Wyoming. WYOMING
64 artifacts from the National Museum of American History’s firearm collection go on display at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, 5.4.
FLORIDA
The Polk Museum of Art will host the Mayfaire Arts Festival. Beverly K. Cox, formerly Exhibits Coordinator for the National Portrait Gallery, will serve as the jurist for the museum’s annual two-day arts festival in Lakeland, 5.10.
St. Augustine Lighthouse & Museum will host a public program on the Art of Boatbuilding, featuring curator Douglas Herman from the National Museum of the American Indian. He will present a public demonstration on boatbuilding by Pacific Islanders in St. Augustine, 5.18.
NORTH CAROLINA
The Schiele Museum of Natural History and Lynn Planetarium will open an exhibition entitled Mammal Safari, featuring 25 mounted specimens on loan from the National Museum of Natural History, in Gastonia, 5.18.
MARYLAND
College Park Aviation Museum will host their second Youth Capture the Colorful Cosmos workshop in College Park, 5.19.
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Museum hosts a reception for all Affiliate staff during the American Alliance of Museums annual meeting in Baltimore, 5.21.
 Native skateboard culture is headed to Connecticut CONNECTICUT
The Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center hosts SITES’s Ramp it Up: Skateboard Culture in Native America in Mashantucket, 5.25.
TEXAS
Fort Worth Museum of Science and History is hosting SITES’ Elvis at 21, featuring 40 Smithsonian artifacts in Fort Worth, 5.23.
MAINE
Abbe Museum opens SITES’ IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas, in Bar Harbor 5.23.
January 30, 2013
 Last year, the Smithsonian launched its first-ever advertising campaign, Seriously Amazing. As part of the effort, seriouslyamazing.org asked a number of fun “SI-Q” – questions designed to peak your interest in our collections, research and exhibitions.
Affiliations staff has decided to start asking our own intriguing questions – SA-Q – that seek to expose all the treasures embedded in the Affiliate network. Each month in our e-newsletter, you’ll see a new feature, posing a question that will expose all the ways that Affiliates contribute to the diffusion of knowledge. First to email a right answer wins a prize!
January’s SA-Q asked: It’s inauguration time! Which Affiliate has presidential-related exhibits or artifacts on view?
The winner was Janet Hedrick, Eastern Regional Development Manager at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, who pointed to the Booth Western Art Museum, an Affiliate in Cartersville, Georgia, and their presidential exhibit. Do you know of other Affiliates with presidential-related exhibits or artifacts on view? Let us know! Comment here, or drop us a note at affiliates@si.edu.
February’s SA-Q will be related to Black History Month, so put on your thinking caps!
April 24, 2012
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) $17 million in grants for 208 humanities projects, including the following Affiliates:
- City of Las Cruces Museum System (Las Cruces, New Mexico) received $1,000 to host the NEH traveling exhibition Bison.
- Long Island Museum of American Art, History, and Carriages (Long Island, New York) was awarded $286,014 for the installation and interpretation of the exhibitions-Carriage Museum’s Streets of New York and Carriages for Sport and Pleasure-about the social and economic history of horse-drawn transportation in New York City circa 1900.
- Ellen Noel Art Museum of the Permian Basin (Odessa, Texas) will receive $1,000 to host the NEH traveling exhibition Grass Roots.
- Buffalo Bill Historical Center (Cody, Wyoming) was awarded $40,000 to develop a traveling exhibition- Enduring Legacies of the Great Plains: The Paul Dyck Collection- a view on Plains Indian cultures as documented in a collection of materials from the pre-reservation and early reservation periods.
The Grammy Foundation has awarded a $20,000 grant to the Oklahoma Historical Society (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma) to restore and preserve about 600 hours of Bob Wills’ music recorded in the 1940s.
The McAllen City Commission approved plans for a nearly $277,000 facelift for the International Museum of Art and Science (McAllen, Texas). Under the plan, McAllen would re-orient the museum’s loading docks, build a new steel-and-concrete walkway and install blue lights to illuminate the building at night.
A collection of early textile machines at the American Textile History Museum (Lowell, Massachusetts) has been recognized by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) for its historic significance to 19th century engineering and technology.
May 23, 2011
 Michelle Delaney signs her book at the exhibition. Photos by Ashley and Aaron Davis of Happy Heart , LLC In 2006, Michelle Delaney, the director of the Smithsonian’s new Consortium for Understanding the American Experience and a curator of photography at the National Museum of American History, first visited the Buffalo Bill Historical Center (BBHC). She traveled to this Smithsonian Affiliate in Cody, Wyoming, to research her book, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Warriors: A Photographic History by Gertrude Kasëbier. The potential to collaborate was immediately apparent to both the BBHC and the Smithsonian. In 2009, Delaney received a fellowship to research a companion exhibition, which debuted in Cody at the BBHC in April of 2010. Now the exhibition has come to the Smithsonian’s International Gallery - just in time for the 2011 Affiliations National Conference!
The exhibition displays photographer Gertrude Kasëbier’s (1852-1934) work which was inspired by a grand parade of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West troupe en route to New York City’s Madison Square Garden. Kasëbier decided to document the participants and began a project to photograph Sioux Indians traveling with the show. On view are approximately 60 images from her work and artifacts on loan from the Buffalo Bill Historical Center’s collections.
 An image from the exhibition by photographer Gertrude Kasebier, National Museum of American History As part of the Smithsonian Affiliations National Conference, we’re pleased to have Michelle Delaney speak about the exhibition and join us for a tour on Tuesday afternoon, June 14. We hope to see you there!
For information on the Smithsonian Affiliations National Conference, and to register, click here.
August 27, 2010
Special thanks to Beverly N. Perkins, conservator at Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming, for this guest post.
 AIC-CERT members, Smithsonian Secretary G. Wayne Clough and Under Secretary for History, Art and Culture, Richard Kurin, the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, and CRCH members meeting to discuss recovery projects. Photo by Beverly Perkins. Three American Institute for Conservation-Collections Emergency Response Team (AIC-CERT) members were asked to join the Smithsonian Haiti Cultural Recovery Project on July 4th, 2010. Beverly Perkins, Karen Pavelka, and David Goist spent some time with the staff of the Centre de Sauvetage de Biens Culturels(CRCH) helping to set up the CRCH labs so that they can be used for conservation treatments and to train Haitians in the recovery of cultural collections. Under the supervision of Project Manager, Stephanie Hornbeck, the visiting conservators also carried out conservation projects and helped to guide tours of the labs.
 Conservation projects at work in the lab. Photo by Beverly Perkins. A project I worked on involved conserving ceramics and building elements as they began to come in to the lab from various sites in Haiti. Some of the ceramics had been clumsily reassembled at some point in their past, prior to being brought to the conservation center. One group ceramics from a nativity scene were considered to be more decorative than historical, and so the losses were filled and shaped to replicate the pieces that had been lost. These new elements were then toned with paints to make the ceramic appear to be whole again. All of the treatments are documented with written notes and photographs so that in the future our work may be easily distinguished from the original ceramic.
 Richard Kurin and guests at a reception at the President and Mrs. Preval's home. Photo by Beverly Perkins. Also during our stay, the United States President’s Committee for the Arts and Humanities visited Haiti, along with dignitaries from the Smithsonian and The Broadway League. The meetings held with Haitian cultural leaders helped to strengthen the determination to salvage cultural collections and train Haitians in that salvage effort. The visiting dignitaries, AIC-CERT volunteers, and the staff of the CRCH were treated to an evening of Haitian song and dance at President and Mrs. Preval’s lovely home.
The ten days I spent away from the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, a Smithsonian Affiliate, were donated in the spirit of good will from the Museum’s board and staff and the people of Cody, Wyoming to the people of Haiti. Upon my return from Haiti, the Museum’s director, Bruce Eldredge asked how we could further be of assistance to the people of Haiti. He developed a plan to offer training for one or two Haitians in the conservation laboratory of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center. He further offered to provide support following those months of training.
This project is in the process of being formed, and so the story continues…
 Devastation to a cathedral in Haiti. Photo by Beverly Perkins.
Congratulations to these Affiliates making headlines this week!
Georgia Aquarium (Atlanta, GA)
The Georgia Aquarium is officially the world’s largest fish tank…READ MORE
The Georgia Aquarium is officially the world’s largest, after a certificate presentation by Guinness World Records Sunday…READ MORE
National Jazz Museum in Harlem (New York, NY)
For jazz fans, nothing could be more tantalizing than the excerpts made available by the National Jazz Museum in Harlem of newly discovered recordings from the 1930s and ’40s…READ MORE
 Q&A: National Jazz Museum Director on the Newly Discovered Trove of Jazz Greats- The director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem discusses new music by Count Basie, Lester Young, and others…READ MORE
Audio Exclusive: Eight Never-Before-Heard Clips from America’s Jazz Greats- The National Jazz Museum shares part of its new treasure trove with NEWSWEEK…READ MORE
Kona Historical Society (Kona, HI)
 Several nonprofit organizations, a state agency and three local counties have been awarded $3.3 million from a state land preservation fund to protect 753 acres on the Big Island, Kauai, Molokai and Oahu…READ MORE…and MORE
Buffalo Bill Historical Center (Cody, WY)
Annie Oakley has been portrayed in popular culture as everything from a rough tomboy to a preening princess, but 150 years after her birth, one historian says a more nuanced look at the famed sharpshooter shows her to be a complex woman who defies categorization…READ MORE
Center for the History of Psychology (Akron, OH)
 Students, researchers and the general public soon will be able to experience the history of psychology in a museum setting at The University of Akron’s (UA) new Center for the History of Psychology (CHP), which opens to the public Aug. 30…READ MORE
National World War II Museum (New Orleans, LA)
 Construction of the $35 million U.S. Freedom Pavilion: Land, Sea and Air will be formally announced Friday as part of the museum’s overall $300 million expansion…READ MORE
June 29, 2010
Despite the economy, there are many bright spots to celebrate in Affiliateland this month. Great job everyone!
 Adler Planetarium (Chicago, Illinois) received a $40,000 grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities to develop a planning project leading to recommendations for improving the storage of a collection of artifacts related to the history of astronomy, maritime history, and related fields.
 Buffalo Bill Historical Center (Cody, Wyoming) was awarded a $200,000 grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities to begin preparation of a thematic, illustrated digital edition of the papers of Buffalo Bill Cody, a symbol of the American West in the popular imagination. BBHC was also granted $10,250 from the Wyoming Cultural Trust Fund to develop the exhibition “Arapaho Journey: Photographs and Stories from the Wind River Reservation.”
The Birthplace of Country Music Alliance (Bristol, Tennessee) is set to receive $25,000 from the Tennessee Arts Commission.
 Raices Latin Music Museum (New York, NY) will receive a $3,000 grant from IMLS’ American Heritage Preservation Grants to preserve an iconic straw boater hat worn by world-famous Cuban-American musician and bandleader, Desi Arnaz.
 The Historical Society of Washington, DC has received a $3,000 grant from IMLS’ American Heritage Preservation Grant program to rehouse, preserve and make accessible 3,600 oversized photographs from the Capital Photo Service Collection of 1957-2000.
The Museum of Appalachia (Norris, Tennessee) received a $25,000 grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission to install a new, energy-efficient climate control system in the Museum’s Hall of Fame.
 Leon Levy Foundation Awards an additional $860,092 grant to The Center for Jewish History (New York, New York) for Preservation of Archival Materials
Three Smithsonian Affiliates were awarded funds through the Smithsonian Community Grant program:
Sonoma County Museum (Santa Rosa, California) was awarded $5,000 to fund a family day, oral history day, and panel discussion related to the themes of Bittersweet Harvest: The Bracero Program, 1942-1964.
 Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center (Mashantucket, Connecticut) was awarded $4,864 to fund two speakers and programming advertisement related to the themes of Native Words, Native Warriors.
Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (Birmingham, Alabama) was awarded $5,000 to fund a book signing, photography workshop, public program, teacher workshop, and programming advertisement related to the themes of Let Your Motto Be Resistance.
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