Marvin Harris papers
This collection contains the professional papers of anthropologist Marvin Harris. Harris was a prominent anthropologist, best known for developing the controversial paradigm of cultural materialism. He authored several important books in the field of anthropology and taught at Columbia University and The University of Florida. The papers include correspondence, research materials, his publications, unpublished manuscripts, conference papers, lectures, subject files, teaching files, computer files, and photographs.
Smithsonian Folklife Festival records: 2005 Smithsonian Folklife Festival
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.
American Federation of Arts records
bulk 1909-1969
The records of the American Federation of Arts (AFA) provide researchers with a complete set of documentation focusing on the founding and history of the organization from its inception through the 1960s. The collection measures 79.8 linear feet, and dates from 1895 through 1993, although the bulk of the material falls between 1909 and 1969. Valuable for its coverage of twentieth-century American art history, the collection also provides researchers with fairly comprehensive documentation of the many exhibitions and programs supported and implemented by the AFA to promote and study contemporary American art, both nationally and abroad.
Smithsonian Folklife Festival records: 2003 Smithsonian Folklife Festival
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.
John Peabody Harrington papers
Harrington was a Bureau of American Ethnology ethnologist involved in the study of over one hundred American tribes. His speciality was linguistics. Most of the material concerns California, southwestern, northwestern tribes and includes ethnological, archeological, historical notes; writings, correspondence, photographs, sound recordings, biological specimens, and other types of documents. Also of concern are general linguistics, sign language, writing systems, writing machines, and sound recordings machines. There is also some material on New World Spanish, Old World languages. In addition, there are many manuscripts of writings that Harrington sketched, partially completed, or even completed but never published. The latter group includes not only writings about anthropological subjects but also histories, ranging from a biography of Geronimo to material on the history of the typewriter. The collection incorporates material of Richard Lynch Garner, Matilda Coxe Stevenson, and others. In his field work, Harrington seems sometimes to have worked within fairly firm formats, this especially being true when he was "rehearing" material, that is in using an informant to verify and correct the work of other researchers. Often, however, the interviews with informants (and this seems to have been the case even with some "rehearings") seem to have been rather free form, for there is a considerable intertwining of subjects. Nevertheless, certain themes frequently appear in his work, including annotated vocabularies concerning flora and fauna and their use, topography, history and biography, kinship, cosmology (including tribal astronomy), religion and philosophy, names and observations concerning neighboring tribes, sex and age division, material culture, legends, and songs. The fullness of such materials seems to have been limited only by the time Harrington had to spend with a goup and the knowledge of his informants.
Biographical Files
Record unit 7308 contains biographical materials assembled by the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU). A portion of these materials were transferred to the Smithsonian Archives in 1974 and 1975 as part of the main body of AOU records. The AOU has named the Smithsonian Archives as repository for its official records. In 1983, the Archives …
Willis Wagner Wirth Papers
These papers consist of incoming and outgoing correspondence primarily documenting Wirth's career at the USDA and his research on Diptera. Also included are small amounts of correspondence concerning his work with the United States Public Health Service and his tenure as a Fulbright Research Scholar in Australia, 1956-1957. The correspondence concerns …
George W. Byers Photograph Collection
This finding aid was digitized with funds generously provided by the Smithsonian Institution Women's Committee.
Records
These records contain exhibition material, including staff research notes on artists and artwork; administrative records concerning the shipment of exhibited artwork, loan correspondence, security and display of the exhibited material, photographs of display items, and installation photographs; staff correspondence including correspondence and memoranda from Adelyn Dohme Breeskin and David W …
Peter Hurd and Henriette Wyeth Hurd papers
The papers of painters Peter Hurd and Henriette Wyeth Hurd measure 5.2 linear feet, date from 1917 to 1993, and present an overview of their careers and their lives together through correspondence, notes, writings, artwork, printed material, and photographs.