Papers created by Asian art historian, curator, and collector Dr. James Francis Cahill. Includes personal and professional correspondence and project files documenting his many publications, lectures and activities in the Asian art field. Documents span his early career at the Freer Gallery of Art, where he served as curator of Chinese art from 1957-1965, and his tenure 1965-1994 as Professor of the History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley.

This accession consists of records documenting the joint expedition made by the Freer Gallery of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, from February 20, 1923 to August 6, 1927, and also the Freer Gallery of Art sponsored expedition from November 16, 1929 to April 11, 1934. Both expeditions were led by Carl Whiting Bishop, Associate Cur...

An associate curator and associate in archaeology at the Freer Gallery of Art from 1922 to 1942, the collection of Carl Whiting Bishop (1881-1942) document his Gallery-sponsored travels to China from 1923 to 1934 and include an unpublished manuscript describing his archaeological research in China; line drawings; rubbings; maps; note cards; and nearly 4,000 glass and film negatives with corresponding original silver prints. These document his expeditions in northern and central China, illustrating archaeological sites in Henan, Shanxi, and Hebei provinces. Specific digs include the large neolithic site at Wanquan, Shanxi, and sixth century C.E. tombs near Fenyin. Additional images show Chinese cityscapes, daily life and customs, topography, temples, pagodas, caves, and sculpture.

The John Calvin Ferguson Family papers measure 6.4 linear feet, and date from circa 1850s to 1988, with the bulk dating from 1900 to 1945. The bulk of the papers consists of John Calvin Ferguson's personal, professional, and family correspondence, and correspondence between other members of the Ferguson family. The papers also include biographical materials; sermons, speeches, and writings by Ferguson and others; printed materials, both collected and given to Ferguson; and photographs, including five photograph albums.

This finding aid was digitized with funds generously provided by the Smithsonian Institution Women's Committee. The materials in the David Crockett Graham Papers (Record Unit 7148) were sent to Alexander Wetmore, Director of the United States National Museum (USNM), between 1925 and 1935 by Graham. Wetmore deposited them in the Division of E...

These papers consist mainly of records of the Astrophysical Observatory (also abbreviated APO) under the Directorship of Samuel P. Langley, Charles G. Abbot, and Loyal Blaine Aldrich.

The Smithsonian Institution Festival of American Folklife, held annually since 1967 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was renamed the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in 1998. The materials collected here document the planning, production, and execution of the annual Festival, produced by the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage (1999-present) and its predecessor offices (1967-1999). An overview of the entire Festival records group is available here: Smithsonian Folklife Festival records.

The collection documents Howard F. Bowker, a coin collector and expert in the coinage of East Asia.

Photographs taken by Simon Ottenberg in Southeastern Nigeria within the Afikpo Village Group, at the time a group of 22 Eastern Igbo villages (sometimes considered part of the Cross River Igbo grouping) in southeastern Nigeria, while on a pre-doctoral Social Science Research Grant from December of 1951 through March of 1953 and during field research from September of 1959 to December of 1960. Also included are photographs taken from June of 1960 to December of 1960 of Abakaliki, a town and the administrative center of the northestern Igbo people, north of Afikpo. According to Dr. Ottenberg in his publication about masked Afikpo rituals, "The Afikpo belong to an Igbo subgroup called Ada or Edda (Forde and Jones 1950, pp. 51-56), which includes the Okpaha, Edda, Amaseri, and Unwana village-groups, all of which border on the Afikpo, and the Nkporo and Adaeze, both short distances away" (Masked Rituals of Afikpo, 1975, p. 3).

The personal papers of Charles Lang Freer, the industrialist and art collector who founded the Freer Gallery of Art. The papers include correspondence, diaries, art inventories, scrapbooks of clippings on James McNeil Whistler and other press clippings, and photographs.