Smithsonian Networks is a joint venture between Showtime Networks and the Smithsonian Institution. It was formed to create channels featuring programs largely inspired by the assets of the Smithsonian Institution, the world's largest museum and research complex. Smithsonian Channel features award-winning original documentaries, series and ...

Smithsonian Networks is a joint venture between Showtime Networks and the Smithsonian Institution. It was formed to create channels featuring programs largely inspired by the assets of the Smithsonian Institution, the world's largest museum and research complex. Smithsonian Channel features award-winning original documentaries, series and ...

The collection documents the customs and culture of black gospel song and its performance in 19th- and 20th-century America. Dr. Reagon collected photographs, sheet music, and other primary and secondary sources chronicling the development and legacy of this medium, from the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement, from blues to Gospel to classical to jazz. Among the subjects included in this collection are trailblazers such as Charles Tindley, Thomas A. Dorsey, Rosetta Tharpe, Duke Ellington, and Nathaniel Dett. Noted performers are the Fisk Jubilee Singers, the Harmonizing Four, the Hampton University Choir, and the Chick Webb Orchestra.

The collection documents Duke Ellington's career primarily through orchestrations (scores and parts), music manuscripts, lead sheets, transcriptions, and sheet music. It also includes concert posters, concert programs, television, radio, motion picture and musical theater scripts, business records, correspondence, awards, as well as audiotapes, audiodiscs, photographs, tour itineraries, newspaper clippings, magazines, caricatures, paintings, and scrapbooks.

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 consists of correspondence, appointment books, business records, music manuscripts, sound recordings, photographs, and ephemera documenting the activities of Duke Ellington and the management of Tempo Music, Incorporated. There is a small amount of material relating to the Ellingotn family.

Primarily published sheet music, plus some related ephemera. Originally included 781 boxes of American sheet music and assorted clippings, articles, photographs, etc.; also 93 boxes of 33-1/3 RPM phonograph records, 30 boxes of 45 RPM records, and 20 boxes of 78 RPM records

The William Wildschut photograph collection contains 183 photographic negatives, and 89 post cards. From 1917 to 1928 William Wildschut studied the Apsáalooke people through interviews, photography, and the collection of cultural objects. In 1921 Wildschut was hired as a field man by George Gustav Heye the director of the Museum of the American Indian, Wildschut officially collected and conducted field expeditions in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Canada, and North Dakota on behalf of the Museum until 1928. Wildschuts photographs include portrait style photos of Apsáalooke people, special events, daily reservation life, interments, and encampments. Tribes represented in this collection are primarily Apsáalooke, the postcard collection consists of other tribes including Lakota, Arapaho, and other unidentified tribes.

Sam DeVincent loved music and art and began collecting sheet music with lithographs at an early age. Series 2: Armed Forces contains circa 3,400 pieces of sheet music and song folios documenting the military history of the United States; there are only a handful of foreign imprints. An overview to the entire DeVincent collection is available here: Sam DeVincent Collection of Illustrated American Sheet Music.

A report prepared by archaeologist and art historian Langdon Warner on his travels of 1913-1914 to investigate the founding of an American school of Chinese archaeology to be established in Beijing. Warner's travels included Europe, Japan, Korea, China and Indo-China. Warner spoke with scholars, administrators and officials, and travelled to museum...