Ella Fitzerald, one of the grand dames of jazz, poses for photographer Car van Vechten in 1940. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Friday, March 12: Philosophical Fridays

Come join in the first of a series of philosophical Fridays, a forum where you and your peers can discuss issues of ethics, personal identity and knowledge—Socratic style! In this inaugural session helmed by UVA professor Mitchell Green, you and your peers will discuss morality in the context of history and contemporary society. Tickets are required. Please visit this site for prices and information on how you can purchase tickets. Resident Associates Program, 6:45-8:15 PM.

Saturday, March 13: The Sacred Art of Making a Mandala: Opening Ceremony

Come on out to the Freer Sackler gallery and witness the creation of a sand mandala—a spiritual image created out of brightly-colored grains of sand which, according to Tibetan Buddhist beliefs, transmits positive energy to those nearby. The artwork will be completed over the course of the week, so be sure to keep checking back in to see how it progresses. Free. Freer Sackler Gallery, 12:00 PM

Sunday, March 14: Rhythm Café: Women in Jazz

Come learn about the innovative women who left an indelible mark on the all-American musical form: jazz. Enjoy a lecture by local radio personality Ellen Carter of WPFW 89.3 FM and musical performances by local artist Janelle Gill.  Tickets are required. Cost is $15 general admission. Call 202-633-4866 for more information. Anacostia Museum, 11:00 AM.

At the Renwick Gallery last week, a number of Japanese-American families gathered for the opening of the new exhibition, “The Art of Gaman; Arts and Crafts from the Japanese American Internment Camps, 1942-1946.”

They were there to see some 120 hand-crafted tools, teapots, furniture, toys, games, musical instruments, pendants and pins and paintings and other artworks that had been made by family members or friends that had been among the 120,000 Japanese Americans, who were ordered to report to internment camps after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Delphine Hirasuan, guest curator and author of the book The Art of Gaman, arrived at the idea for the exhibition after discovering a painted wooden bird pin among her deceased mother’s things. It was a piece that Hirasuan had never seen before and when she asked her father about it, he said it was likely the pin had come “from camp.” Hirasuna began to ask others in the Japanese-American community and soon discovered that many families had, but kept hidden away, a wealth of castaway objects they’d made in the camps, many of them exquisitely handcrafted.

The Japanese word “Gaman,” says Hirasuna  means  “to bare the seemingly unbearable with dignity and patience.” These objects were made as a testament to the hardships of the camps.

Internees could take with them only what they could carry. And when they arrived at the camps, they found that they would be provided with only the barest of essentials. Once in the camps, Hirasuan learned that out of necessity, the internees began to build from found scraps of metal and wood simple things like chairs and tables and pegs so that they could hang up their clothes. Soon, they crafted other items:  dolls, jewelry, musical instruments and games as a way to pass the time, and, she added, to find a source of comfort.

Once out of the camps, the families put the objects away, like so many bad memories, in attics, or garages, or sheds.

Now, the items are on view in museum vitrines and hung framed on the walls of a Smithsonian museum, a powerful homage to the Japanese American story.

“The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts from the Japanese American Internment Camps, 1942-1946″ will be on view at the Renwick Gallery, located on Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street N.W. through January 30, 2011.

Photographs of Harriet Tubman's funeral, with hand-written descriptions from one of Tubman's relatives, were donated to the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Photos by Erica Hendry

The last time Harriet Tubman heard the African American spiritual, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” was in the final hours of her life, as friends and family gathered around her and sang the song to “carry her home.”

Tubman (1822- 1913), an African American abolitionist and humanitarian who guided dozens of slaves out of the southern states to freedom in the north, was also an Union spy during the Civil War.

Yesterday, on what would have been her 188th birthday, a crowd gathered in a congressional hearing room, holding hands as they sang through the verses. But this time, the song celebrated a rare gift: the donation of 39 of Tubman’s belongings to the the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Charles L. Blockson, a Philadelphia historian who donated the items to the museum, has spent much of his life collecting artifacts and texts that represent African American history, including a collection of 20,000 items at Temple University under his name . But when he inherited Tubman’s belongings, which were willed to him by a grand-niece of Tubman’s who died, he was “in awe.”

“I prayed,” he said, “I kept it under my bed for eight months.”

But he wanted to honor Tubman in a larger way, so he revealed the items to Rep. Robert A. Brady (D-Pa.), chair of the Committee on House Administration and the congressman for Blockson’s district, and later decided to donate the items.

“It’s important that Harriet Tubman is honored,” said Blockson, whose family escaped slavery with Tubman’s help. “And now, Harriet Tubman’s spirit is here.”

From left, Lonnie Bunch, museum director; Rep. Robert A. Brady (D-Pa.); and donor Charles L. Blockson, a Philadelphia historian, discuss a book of hymnals that once belonged to Harriet Tubman.

Some of the items were laid out on table in the hearing room yesterday, including a large seven-by-ten-inch photograph of Tubman. The other items ranged from a fork and knife, believed to come from Tubman’s home, and a silk shawl, given to Tubman by England’s Queen Victoria as a gift around 1897, during the queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebration. The delicate silk and lace shawl is still in near-perfect condition, free of any rips or visible repairs.

Lonnie Bunch, the director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, says the museum has collected about 10,000 artifacts. It is scheduled to open in 2015, but Bunch said this donation was particularly special because there are very few artifacts or materials in existence today that can be traced to Tubman.

“I didn’t even know these things existed,” he said. “So I think that’s what special about it—it allows us to be the place where we can really interpret Harriet Tubman, which no one else can really do.”

Bunch said the museum will likely use the items in an exhibit on slavery and freedom.

“These items will help us talk about the power of freedom;the lure of freedom;that no matter how imbonded you were, you wanted to be free,” he said. “Harriet Tubman really risked life and limb to do just that.”

The completed sand mandala created at the Freer in January 2002. Image courtesy of the Freer.

Remember sand art from when you were a kid? It’s that craft where you took a clear, empty bottle and poured in layer upon layer of colored sand until the whole thing was filled to the brim. (And then you’d set it in your bedroom for a while and over time the sand would settle a bit and your sand art didn’t look so pretty anymore and you ended up chucking it. Sigh.) Now, with that image in mind, let’s kick that craft up a bazillion notches and consider the sand mandala.

In Tibetan Buddhism, the mandala is a symbolic, graphic representation of the universe rendered in colored sand. While creating the intricately geometric forms grain by grain, the monks chant and meditate over the slowly-evolving image, which, according to their practice, transmits positive energy to those nearby. After the mandala is completed, it is swept away and the sand is traditionally collected and dispersed in a body of flowing water—an act that is representative of the transitory nature of material existence.

Some of you may remember a special 2002 event at the Freer where, over the course of two weeks, Buddhist monks created a mandala in response to the September 11 tragedies. (You can see a time lapse video of that event here.) Well, the Buddhists are back and between March 13 and 20, they will be creating another mandala masterpiece. If you’re in the DC metro area, make it out to the Freer a few times over the next week and see how the artwork is progressing. The museum has posted a full schedule of when you can see the monks at work. But keep in mind: the disillusionment ceremony—that’s the part where everything gets swept away—happens on March 21.

So the next time you throw out the sand art on your dresser, don’t take it as a failed artistic venture—think of yourself as having taken one baby step on the path to enlightenment.

On January 25, 1904, a military procession to Smithsonian Institution grounds delivered the remains of James Smithson (c.1765-1829) whose bequest created the Smithsonian. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution Archives

One hundred and thirty-four years ago today, Alexander Graham Bell made the first phone call. “Mr. Watson,” he said into a transmitter, “Come here. I want to see you.” And Watson, in the next room, heard the words through a receiver.

Later, in his life Alexander Graham Bell would become a Smithsonian Institution regent and he would make a peculiar and bizarre journey to Genoa, Italy, to retrieve the remains of the Smithsonian’s founder, James Smithson, to bring them to the United States. (In life, the Englishman had never visited the States.)

It is the “proper thing to do,” Bell insisted in 1903, when he made the case to go get Smithson’s bones. The burial ground where Smithson was interred after his death in 1829 was being over run by a nearby stone quarry and the graves were being removed.

So the inventor of the telephone left promptly to recover the bones of the man who had given the United State $508,418 (about $10 million today) to create an institution for the “increase and diffusion of knowledge.”

Bell got back to Washington in January 1904 and Smithson’s casket was brought to the Smithsonian from the Washington Navy Yard by a cavalry detachment traveling along Pennsylvania Avenue.

The crypt, where the founder was laid to rest, can still be seen inside the Smithsonian Castle’s north entrance vestibule.

Loree Rodkin designed the jewelry worn by Michelle Obama for the inaugural balls. Photo by Molly Roberts.

Loree Rodkin is a Los Angeles-based jewelry designer, who crafted First Lady Michelle Obama’s inauguration jewelry, including diamond earrings, a 10-carat diamond signet ring and a set of diamond bangle bracelets. Rodkin was on hand Tuesday morning when Mrs. Obama donated her inaugural ball gown by the young designer Jason Wu, along with the jewelry and her Jimmy Choo shoes to the National Museum of American History. We chatted about jewelry and few other things.

What does it feel like to see your work on display at the Smithsonian?

Surreal. You can’t dream this large. It’s like winning the Academy Award of jewelry design.

Your work has been described as “visionary,” what did you envision for Mrs. Obama?

She is so dramatic looking and so statuesque. I wanted something that accentuated her beauty. I wanted something with a twist. Fashion forward, but classic.

You were born in Chicago. How does that city figure into your relationship with the First Lady?

The store Ikram in Chicago’s Gold Coast on Rush Street; Mrs Obama has shopped there over the years and relies on Ikram’s style.

Is the jewelry symbolic?

Michelle Obama's inaugural jewelry, earrings, bracelets and a ring were designed by Los Angeles-based Loree Rodkin. Photo courtesy of the museum

The election earrings that I designed are called the celestial earrings. They have 61 carats of diamonds and they represent the moon, the stars, and the hope for Obama for our future.

First words and thoughts when Mrs. Obama called to say she’d selected your jewelry?

You’ve called the wrong jewelry designer. I traditionally make very edgy jewelry for performers like Madonna and Cher and Elton John. But I also do grown-up jewelry and for Michelle Obama, I did my most elegant work. It’s still hard to fathom. I called my mother and she didn’t believe me!

"Sea Lion Brand with Blue", made of Sea lion skin/fur with nylon thread, by Sonya Kelliher-Combs. Courtesy of the museum

In New York City, a new exhibition at the American Indian Museum’s George Gustav Heye  Center, is intriguingly entitled, “HIDE: Skin as Material and Metaphor.”

In the show, “Skin” is both that of human and animal flesh and proves not only to be subject matter, but as animal hide, it becomes the material or canvas for the works. And finally, skin also serves as an allegory for the hardships and the struggles—and the ability to overcome them—in native communities both past and present.

“For Native people,” writes curator Kathleen Ash-Milby, in the online exhibition, “our own skin functions as a canvas that we can inscribe with messages about our identity or use as a shield to protect and hide our secrets. As a material, animal skin or hide has had a long history within Native culture. It is a symbolic reminder of historical misrepresentation, exploitation, and racial politics.”

The pieces in the show are a challenge and ring with a brutal honesty that leaves the viewer with an unsettled feeling and an intellectual quest for more.  Part I of this two part show features the mixed media works of native artists Sonya Kelliher-Combs and Nadia Myre. Both women document their own personal battles with unflinching detail.

Alaskan-born Sonya Kelliher-Combs creates sculptural pieces made from animal fur, hides and the sinew and tissue of internal organs, materials held sacred to the lifestyles of the Arctic and Sub-Arctic tribes. In her portion of the show, entitled “Skin Secrets,” the Inupiaq/Athabaskan artist uses both organic and man-made media in her exploration of the exterior and the interior.  In one piece, a small army of empty pouches made from sheep and reindeer rawhide, line up in regimental form. They are shaped as if they once held something but they are empty containers, according to the exhibition text, where the artist wrestles with “secrets that are unspeakable or forced into hiding.”

A woven beaded work from "Scarscrapes" by Nadia Myre. Courtesy of the museum

Nadia Myre’s presentation “Scar Tissue,” confronts hidden trauma and redefines the scar as a symbol of healing and strength rather than disfigurement and loss. A series of her works, called “Scarscarpes” combine bold, graphic imagery with loom-woven beaded works and prints of her Anishinaabe heritage to create a decorative, historical and personal celebration of overcoming injury. In these pieces ugly scars are rendered beautiful, part of an overarching landscape and matrix of experience and personal growth.

These two woman tell stories of hardship, isolation and stunning personal strength. In their hands, a new beauty arises against the clichéd  cosmetic quest for wrinkle free, poreless and flawless skin—and packs more meaning into an an old maxim, “beauty is only skin deep.”

HIDE: Skin as Material and Metaphor, Part 1 is open now at the George Gutav Heye Center.  Part II, featuring the art of Michael Belmore, Arthur Renwick, KC Adams, Terrance Houle, Rosalie Favell, and Sarah Sense, opens September 4.

Louisiana Tanager, Clark's Crow, Lewis' Woodpecker by Alexander Lawson. Image courtesy of the American Art Museum.

Monday, March 8: Seasoned with Spirit

Enjoy episodes of the public television series Seasoned with Spirit, join host Loretta Barrett Oden as she visits Native communities to learn about their agricultural and culinary traditions. In Food Upon the Water, Oden participates in a wild rice harvest and shows you how to prepare a wild rice and maple syrup cake to accompany a lakeside first rice feast of buffalo, wild rice and cranberry stuffed acorn squash, buffalo stew, and beautiful ruby red swamp tea. Free. American Indian Museum, 12:30 PM.

Tuesday, March 9: Jane Austen: The Author, Her Legacy and…Sea Monsters?

Jane Austen’s writings have garnered scores of admirers over the years. Recently, her works have inspired several authors to pen their own best-selling riffs on her work, notably Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters and Darcy’s Passions. Come enjoy a panel discussion with Austen scholar Tara Wallace alone with the authors of the aforementioned books, Seth Grahame-Smith, Ben H. Winters and Regina Jeffers, respectively. Tickets are required. For prices and purchase information, please visit this site. Resident Associates Program, 6:45 PM.

Wednesday, March 10: Afro-Mexican History and Identity: Brown and Black Lecture Series

Noted sociologist and researcher Dr. Maria Elisa Velazquez  of the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia discusses the Afro-Mexican history of identity formation since colonial times. She also brings her own perspective on issues of historical accuracy within this history. Free. Anacostia Museum, 7:00 PM

Thursday, March 11: Nosferatu

Before Twilight and Buffy started feeding on people’s perpetual fascination with vampires, there was Nosferatu. The first film adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Nosferatu was made in Germany in 1922 and its visual style has influenced generations of filmmakers. Enjoy a screening of this seminal silent movie with live musical accompaniment by the Thad Wilson Group. Free. American Art Museum, 6:30 PM.

Friday, March 12: Migratory Bird Club Event: SI Ornithology Exchange

Now that springtime is springing forth, come on out to the National Zoo and enjoy a series of short lectures on current ornithological research throughout the Smithsonian Institution. This event is for Smithsonian Migratory Bird Club members only. Not a member? Call Lisa Whitney at 202-633-3027 or email her at whitneyl@si.edu. Smithsonian Migratory Bird Club members only. RSVP requested. Please contact Amy Wilson at 202.633.0550 or wilsonas@si.edu to RSVP. National Zoo, 3:00 PM.

Faith Asleep (1923) by Harold Weston. Image courtesy of the American Art Museum.

You don’t have to be someone like Luca Brasi to sleep with the fishes anymore because the Resident Associates Program is offering sleepover parties in the Natural History Museum’s Sant Ocean Hall! That’s right kids, for $125 you and a chaperone can have an evening full of edutainment that kicks off with a screening of the IMAX film Wild Ocean 3D after which you’ll enjoy a scavenger hunt, arts and craft activities, a visit to the forensics lab and flashlight tours of the museum. After that, hunker down in the Ocean Hall and fall asleep to the sight of the 45-foot full scale model of Phoenix the Whale gracefully hovering above your head. (Tip: bring a well-padded sleeping bag—remember those floors are marble!) Check out the Resident Associates site for more details. And if you can’t make the March 6 sleepover date, worry not—this event is currently slated to repeat on April 24 and May 15.

Sadly, I doubt that any after-dark shenanigans on par with what you saw in last year’s Night at the Museum movie, but hey, it never hurts to let the imagination wander, right? By comparison, the events detailed in a book like From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler are much more plausible, but still improbable. So if you can’t make the sleepover, try taking in the aforementioned movie and book for some good museums-at-night fun.

Dance of Spring (1937) by Samuel Joseph Brown. Image courtesy of the American Art Museum.

Saturday, March 6: Women’s History Month Family Day Celebration

The Smithsonian celebrates Women’s History Month with a festival devoted to women in the arts. Enjoy music and dance performances and workshops, hands-on art and stamp-collecting activities, and a special Red Carpet area for stars of all ages! Free. American Art Museum, 11:30 AM-3:00 PM

Sunday, March 7: Persian New Year’s Celebration!

Celebrate Nowruz, the Persian New Year festival and celebration of spring at the Freer with this series of family-friendly free events!

11:00 AM

Xanthe Gresham brings to life stories of ancient Persian kings and exciting episodes from the Shanama (Book of kings) and other classic Iranian epics. A lecturer in storytelling and drama at the University of East London, Xanthe entertains young and old alike in the spacious Discovery Theater. Free, but tickets are required. Tickets are available through Ticketmaster. Any remaining tickets will be available at the door on March 7 beginning one hour before show time. This event repeats today at 2:00 PM.

11:00 AM-4:00 PM

For the kids: make Nowruz greeting cards, take part in the Nowruz tradition of jumping over a fire (artificial, of course), and have your fortune told.

Also be sure to check out the animated short Babak and Friends: A First Nowruz. Young Babak lives in the United States and learns about Nowruz when his cousins arrive from Iran to celebrate the New Year. This film is 30 minutes long and will be screened throughout the day.

For the domestic diva (and divo): Learn about Haft Sin, festive tabletop displays that Iranian families traditionally set out to celebrate the return of spring.

12:00 PM

Backgammon: The tables are set for backgammon enthusiasts to come and play this classic parlor game that originated in Persia (present-day Iran). Never played? Never fear! Members of the Northern Virginia Backgammon Club are on hand to offer newbies introductory lessons. This event repeats today at 2:00 PM.

Storytelling: Surabhi Shah: Asian Stories of Rebirth: Storyteller Surabhi Shah returns to the Freer to share stories of new beginnings from across Asia. Her engaging storytelling style is part of a rarely heard tradition from India that weaves story with melodic verse. This event repeats today at 2:00 PM.

12:30 PM

The Pejvak Ensemble: Enjoy new music performed on traditional Persian instruments, featuring Bahadoran on tar and setar; Faraz Minooei on santur; Pezhham Akhavass on tombak; Shohreh Majd, vocals; and Steve Bloom on percussion. Free tickets are required. Tickets are available through Ticketmaster. Any remaining tickets will be available at the door on March 7 beginning one hour before show time. This event will repeat today at 3:30 PM.

1:00 PM

Book Signing: Najmieh Batmanglij: Acclaimed chef and author Najmieh Batmanglij signs copies of her cookbooks, including Happy Nowruz: Cooking with Children to Celebrate the Persian New Year.

When field biologist Gudrun Pflueger found out, in 2005, that a cancerous tumor the size of a golf ball was growing in her brain, her chances for survival looked bleak. Many might have even said that recovery was impossible. But Pflueger—sweet, and yet tough as nails—fought, and remained hopeful.

“Already once something impossible happened,” she says. “Why not a second time?”

The miracle she’s referring to happened just prior to her diagnosis. Pflueger, a wolf expert, was on a six-week expedition along the coast of British Columbia, when she experienced a rare wildlife encounter. Seven Canadian coast wolves encircled her, curiously but not aggressively, in a meadow, while she lay prone in the grass. They played in the field for about an hour.

“The situation kind of carefully evolved. It was always their decision to come closer and closer. They didn’t rush. They took their time. They tried to smell me. They never showed any sign that they would even remotely consider me as prey,” Pflueger told me in an interview two years ago. “They just accepted me.”

At that time, the Smithsonian Channel was preparing to air its first program on Pflueger, called “A Woman Among Wolves.” (Check out the interview and the accompanying video clip.) Now, cancer-free, Pflueger is the subject of a sequel. The channel’s “Running with Wolves” premieres this Sunday at 8pm (et/pt).

“They [the wolves] gave me their will to fight for my life and be determined,” says Pflueger in the film, which describes her deep connection to the animals. The biologist says that her battle with cancer really brought her work into focus, and to a great extent her life’s, purpose, to fight for wolf conservation.

In “Running with Wolves,” she returns to the meadow where her encounter with the wolves happened. She also searches for wolves in other parts of British Columbia, setting up motion sensitive cameras along the way. Months after she installs a camera outside of an empty wolf den, she returns to it and watches the footage. Jackpot! For a second time, she gets a privileged view of wolves. On her laptop, in a cabin in the backcountry, she watches wolf pups coming out of their den for the first time.

Michelle Obama in her inaugural gown. Credit: AFP PHOTO / Saul Loeb / Newscom

At last, the long-awaited moment has arrived. The white chiffon, off-the-shoulder dress that Michelle Obama wore to ten inaugural balls last January will go on view at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History beginning Wednesday, March 10.

Full Stop. Everybody take a deep breath. It’s going to be a part of the permanent collections of the Smithsonian, held there in perpetuity for generations to admire.

On Tuesday, the First Lady will formally present the floor-length gown, designed by Jason Wu, to the Smithsonian in an event that is sure to draw a crowded media scene to the museum. (Early news reports erroneously reported that this event would be open to the public. It is not.) This reporter will be there and will keep ATM followers up to date. We’ve been anxiously awaiting news of the dress since the request went out last year from the Smithsonian to Mrs. Obama for the donation.

Politics play no role in this much-loved tradition. Delirious anticipation mounts with every new administration as the public ponders the moment in Washington, D.C., when the First Lady sends over her dress. Laura Bush’s scooped-neck, red-Chantilly, laced gown, crafted by the Dallas-based Michael Faircloth, arrived eight years ago with equal fanfare.

Indeed, the tradition has been going strong, since 1912 when Helen Taft delivered her dress to the Smithsonian, also a white chiffon. “It’s the first time you see the first lady in her official capacity,” the Smithsonian’s curator of the First Ladies exhibit Lisa Kathleen Graddy likes to tell reporters. And as Mrs. Obama made her debut in that gown, the world took notice. “Already, she has generated the sort of fashion excitement that one hasn’t seen since Mrs. Kennedy,” Vogue’s European editor at large, Hamish Bowles told the Chicago Tribune in January 2009.

In fact, along with Mrs. Obama’s dress also opening next Wednesday, March 10, is a whole new gallery, “A First Lady’s Debut” that includes 11 other gowns worn by first ladies beginning with Mamie Eisenhower (her 1953 inaugural gown, a pink peau de soie designed by Nettie Rosenstein with 2,000 rhinestones), along with a host of other items, portraits and china and personal possessions. But certainly the centerpiece of the show will be this much-anticipated acquisition.

Check your calendar, when can you get here?

In the meantime, check out our video of the current First Ladies exhibit.

Editor’s note: A previous version of this post stated that the Mamie Eisenhower dress going on view in the new exhibit was a a pink rose-colored silk gown worn at a 1957 state dinner at the British Embassy. That dress is already on display in the original exhibition.

A month later, the Mall made a short list of finalists, including trails, university campuses, theme parks and zoos, pedestrian malls and landmarks.

Now, I am happy to report that the tricycle, with its street-view camera mounted on it, will be coming our way!

Voters in Google’s online poll chose the National Mall as winner of the National Landmarks category. Winners in the other categories include the Rochester Institute of Technology, Boulder Creek Path in Boulder, Colorado, Faneuil Hall Marketplace in Boston and the Detroit Zoo.

I have been told that Google will now work with the National Park Service to secure permissions and arrange a time for the Trike to visit. Photos taken during its ride on the paths around the Mall will allow Google Maps to document the area, as it has done for other pedestrian-only areas like the Monterrey coastal bike path and the Santa Monica Pier.

Thanks for hearing our call for the Mall!

Rosa Parks (1983) by Marshall D. Rumbaugh. Image courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery.

The fight for fair and equal treatment is central to the American story and “Struggle for Justice,” a new exhibition that opened recently at the National Portrait Gallery, highlights the champions of people marginalized or disenfranchised because of the color of their skin, their religion, their sex or sexual orientation, or for other reasons.

The exhibition’s complex story of American reform movements begins in the antebellum period with portraits of key figures like Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony and moves on through the 20th century to feature the visages of prominent activists like Martin Luther King and Betty Friedan.  To complement the art on the walls, several kiosks offer video footage of the subjects in news reels and film clips, profiling the stories of groups seeking justice for American Indians, persons with disabilities, women, gays and lesbians and the labor movement.

Admittedly, there are some causes that aren’t represented as well as others—or at least not yet. But worry not—the plan is to switch out some artifacts with other pieces in the collections.

And that’s a good thing, too, because every high school kid is now versed in the major social struggles—namely the fights for African American civil rights and women’s suffrage. But those issues were always covered in the textbooks with deliriously broad strokes and only a few noble American figures ever emerge as figureheads for entire social movements. And, as amazing as those fearless souls were, a whole host others took up the cause and it’s great to see their faces, too—American Indian activists Leonard Crow Dog and Kate Millett, gay rights activist Larry Kramer and United Farm Workers César Chávez and Delores Huerta. That said, Struggle for Justice makes for a more cogent narrative of how social conditions in America came to be what they are today. That handful of familiar faces that still persist in our popular culture are all there and accounted for—but there were plenty more that I had never heard of before, or names I had heard dropped in casual conversation, but was never entirely sure exactly where and how they fit into the larger story.

One of the knockout pieces on display is of one of the more recognizable people in the struggle for civil rights. But in this folk art depiction of Rosa Parks (above) being arrested after refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a city bus, the artist Marshall D. Rumbaugh distorts and exaggerates her proportions. It’s a re-imagined portrayal of Parks in 1955 after she sat down so that others could stand up. Rumbaugh, who was born in 1948, was too young to remember Parks’ landmark act of defiance, curator Ann Shumard told me, but inspiration struck after hearing a Portrait Gallery historian lecture on the role of portraiture in bringing these watershed moments to life.

Struggle for Justice is a permanent exhibition and will continue indefinitely at the National Portrait Gallery.

Smithsonian Secretary G. Wayne Clough speaks about his trip to Antarctica. Photograph by Eric Long

Sometimes even the head of a vast museum and research complex just needs to get down on the floor to make a point. Secretary G. Wayne Clough is making the rounds here at the Smithsonian telling of his recent adventures in Antarctica (above, showing a group of children at the Smithsonian Early Enrichment Center how to move like a penguin.)

We just had to share.