Photographs taken among the Pende peoples in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the years 1955-1957. Publications used for identifying and describing the collection photographs include L'Art Pende (Bruxelles: Académie royale de Belgique, 1958) and Les danses rituelles Mungonge et Kelas des Bapende (Academie royale des sciences coloniales, 1956), both by Léon de Sousberghe; Inventing Masks: Agency and History in the Art of the Central Pende by Z.S. Strother (The University of Chicago Press, 1998); and, from Secrecy: African Art that Conceals and Reveals Mary H. Nooter, ed. (New York: Museum for African Art, 1993), Z.S. Strother's article, The Physical and Social Boundaries of Secrecy: Eastern Pende Constuctions of Secrecy, pp. 157-178.

Ivan Karp (1943-2011) was a curator of African Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) from 1984 to 1993. He was also a professor at Emory University from 1993 to 2011. He conducted fieldwork among the Iteso (Teso) of Kenya and made significant contributions to the areas of African systems of thought, social theory, museum studies, and public scholarship. His collection contains his research on the Iteso of Kenya; his work at Emory University and the Smithsonian Institution; his reviews of manuscripts and books; recommendations that he wrote for his colleagues and students; his published articles and papers presented at conferences; and his project files on various topics including museum studies, African philosophy, public scholarship, agency and personhood, and the history of social anthropology.

This finding aid was digitized with funds generously provided by the Smithsonian Institution Women's Committee.

This accession consists of images of Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) facilities, research, staff, and events. In addition, some images document Panama in general as well as the Mpala Research Centre in Kenya which STRI helped to found. Materials consist of slides, prints, and digital images. Some materials are in electronic ...

Newspaper clippings and personal accounts of the 1913 expedition document malaria infections and the wound Roosevelt sustained when he plunged into the river, trying to save a capsized canoe. The newspaper clippings also include information about the specimens collected during the expedition for the American Museum of Natural History. For...

An exhibition documenting the historical journey made by people from Africa to the Americas, along with their language and music. In the 1930s, Lorenzo Dow Turner discovered that the Gullah people of Georgia and South Carolina retained parts of the culture and language of their West African enslaved ancestors. Turner's research produced a living treasury of previously unknown traditions, songs, and folkways that also uncovered and illuminated the connections with West African and Afro-Brazilian communities.

Photographs by Wyatt MacGaffey, a prominent anthropologist with a lifelong scholarly interest in the Congo, taken during a survey on Belgian colonial architecture for a research project in Kisangani (formerly Stanleyville) in 1980. His images of the often dilapidated buildings range from colonial mansions to views of African housing. Other photographs show small private homes and businesses as well as a mosque under construction by the Saudis and several churches. There are also many street scenes, images of the university and the Congo River. A series of five slides shows popular paintings (such as La Colonie Belge). The value of his images is enhanced by his notes, which record subjects and locations.

These records include correspondence, memoranda, and other information about the activities of the Office, which establishes cooperative research programs with institutions of higher learning in other countries and fosters programs for the international exchange of persons in those fields of science and humanities related to the Smithsonian's ...

This finding aid was digitized with funds generously provided by the Smithsonian Institution Women's Committee.

This finding aid was digitized with funds generously provided by the Smithsonian Institution Women's Committee.