Curatorial Records
This accession consists of records which document the activities of the curatorial staff of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). Subjects covered include the exhibition master plan, workshops, repatriation, exhibitions, councils, collections management, collection research, conservation treatment, budgetary matters, and research. Staff represented include Kathleen E. Ash-Milby, Assistant …
Willis G. Tilton collection of photographs of Native Americans
bulk 1899-1904
Photographs collected by Willis G. Tilton, a dealer in artifacts and photographs relating to Native Americans. Many of the photographs were made by Field Columbian Museum photographer Charles Carpenter at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904; many others were created by various photographers for Field Museum publications. Notable subjects include Big …
Loan Files
These records pertain to the exhibitions of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, beginning with the first held under the auspices of the Smithsonian, Immovable Objects/Lower Manhattan from Battery Park to the Brooklyn Bridge, which opened in June 1975, and ending with Louis Sullivan: The Function of Ornament, which closed in September 1987. In …
Richard Murray research material regarding mural painting in the United States
bulk 1970-2006
The Richard Murray research material regarding mural painting in the United States measures 20.5 linear feet and dates from 1896 to 2006 with the bulk of the material dating from 1970 to 2006. The collection is comprised of Murray's extensive research files, scattered writings, and photographic materials for his life-long research on mural painting in the United States.
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.
Department of Anthropology records
Smithsonian Institution. Department of Anthropology
Smithsonian Institution. United States National Museum. Department of Anthropology
The Department of Anthropology records contain administrative and research materials produced by the department and its members from the time of the Smithsonian Institution's foundation until today.
Photographs of Native Americans and Other Subjects
National Museum of Natural History (U.S.). Department of Anthropology
The collections consists mostly of original and copy prints. There are also some negatives, artwork, photographs of artwork, and printed materials. Included is a large miscellany of ethnological, historical, and some archaeological subjects collected by the Bureau of American Ethnology from a wide variety of sources. To these have been …
Smithsonian Folklife Festival records: 2006 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.
Smithsonian Folklife Festival records: 1989 Festival of American Folklife
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.
National Congress of American Indians records
bulk 1944-1989
The National Congress of American Indian (NCAI), founded in 1944, is the oldest nation-wide American Indian advocacy organization in the United States. The NCAI records document the organization's work, particularly that of its office in Washington, DC, and the wide variety of issues faced by American Indians in the twentieth century. The collection is located in the Cultural Resource Center of the National Museum of the American Indian.
