This accession consists of records that document the activities which the Office of Quincentenary Programs coordinated or organized to mark the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's first landfall in the Americas on October 12, 1492. The Quincentenary programs began in 1985 under the coordination of Smithsonian's Directorate of Inte...

Original documents and papers generated by William J. Hammer and by various companies and individuals with whom he was associated. Includes material related to the research and inventions of Edison, Bell, Tesla, the Curies, etc.

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).

This accession consists of records that document the Office of Special Events activities in preparing luncheon and dinner arrangements for Regent meetings, special awards, exhibitions, and special guests of the Smithsonian Institution. Files contain the following information, however, not all files contain this information: seating arrangement...

The Betty J. Meggers and Clifford Evans Papers document their research and professional activities from 1946-2012 and primarily deal with their archaeological and anthropological research in South America. Their work at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and their frequent collaboration with other researchers and professional organizations is also represented. In addition, this collection contains detailed records on South American research conducted by the Smithsonian Institution from the 1950s through the 2010s. The collection consists of research and project files, raw data and analysis, graphs and illustrations, photographs, correspondence, maps and charts, and administrative files.

The major part of the collection, series 1-4, contains nearly 28,000 glass plates, including original stereoscopic negatives, interpositives, and both negative and positive non-stereoscopic plates used to produce lantern slides and paper prints. The photographs were taken all over the world. The majority are from the Underwood & Underwood active fi...

This collection contains over 37,000 35mm slides, 3,000 glass lantern slides and garden files that may include descriptive information, photocopied articles (from journals, newspapers, or books), planting lists, correspondence, brochures, landscape plans and drawings. Garden files were compiled by Garden Club of America (GCA) members for most of the gardens included in the collection. Some gardens have been photographed over the course of several decades; others only have images from a single point in time. In addition to images of American gardens, there are glass lantern slides of the New York Flower Show (1941-1951) and trips that GCA members took to other countries, including Mexico (1937), Italy, Spain, Japan (1935), France (1936), England (1929), and Scotland. A number of the slides are copies of historic images from outside repositories including horticultural and historical societies or from horticultural books and publications. The GCA made a concerted effort in the mid-1980s to acquire these images in order to increase its documentation of American garden history. Because of copyright considerations, use of these particular images may be restricted.

The Smithsonian Videohistory Program, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation from 1986 until 1992, used video in historical research. Additional collections have been added since the grant project ended. Videohistory uses the video camera as a historical research tool to record moving visual information. Video works best in historical r...

These records document the operations of OAS. They also contain records from an organizational predecessor, the Department of American Studies, Museum of History and Technology, which had been chaired by Washburn. OAS records deal with the work of the Office and its involvement with other Smithsonian offices and bureaus; its work with num...

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.