This accession consists of records created and maintained by Wilton Dillon, Director, documenting the planning and execution of symposia and seminars sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution. Some records also document the general history of the Office of Symposia and Seminars. Materials include correspondence, memoranda, planning documents, ...

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 addit...

These records include tape recordings made or received by the Office of Public Affairs, usually of Smithsonian Institution events or by Smithsonian Institution staff. They also include tapes made of animal sounds for the National Museum of Natural History Audioguide and other tapes received by the Archives, regardless of origin. Some of these...

This accession consists of the administrative records of the National Museum of American Art, Office of the Registrar, 1920-1994, with the majority dated 1985-1994. The records include Exhibition Files, 1920-1960 and 1986-1991; Photo Requests, 1987-1992; Read Files, 1985-1993; Loan Forms/Photos Ordered, 1989-1993; Permission Forms, numbered ...

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.

These records document the fiscal administration of grants received by the Smithsonian Institution. They consist of correspondence, memoranda, budgets, and reports. Many of these records were kept by Phillip H. Babcock, who became an accountant in the Fiscal Division in 1964, chief of the Contracts and Grants Section in 1966, chief of the...

This accession consists of background and working files regarding design and maintenance of exhibit halls in the National Museum of Natural History. The records contain correspondence, reports, publications, photographs, slides, plans, and other materials relating to permanent and temporary exhibits. These records were maintained by Carl ...

This accession consists of records that document the work of the Office of Public Affairs in the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) from 1968 until 1988. Most of the records were created by Sandra Westin and Michele Raphoon, but early files were created by Carol Cutler. The records describe all aspects of the Museum's publicity efforts, particula...

The Myron Bement Smith collection consists of two parts, the papers of Myron Bement Smith and his wife Katharine and the Islamic Archives. It contains substantial material about his field research in Italy in the 1920s and his years working on Islamic architecture in Iran in the 1930s. Letters describe the milieu in which he operated in Rochester NY and New York City in the 1920s and early 1930s; the Smiths' life in Iran from 1933 to 1937; and the extensive network of academic and social contacts that Myron and Katharine developed and maintained over his lifetime. The Islamic Archives was a project to which Smith devoted most of his professional life. It includes both original materials, such as his photographs and notes, and items acquired by him from other scholars or experts on Islamic art and architecture. Smith intended the Archives to serve as a resource for scholars interested in the architecture and art of the entire Islamic world although he also included some materials about non-Islamic architecture.

The records of Artists Talk on Art (ATOA) measure 64.4 linear feet and 317.43 gigabytes and date from circa 1974-2018. The bulk of the records consist of extensive video and sound recordings of events organized by the group featuring artists, critics, historians, dealers, curators and writers discussing contemporary issues in the American art world in hundreds of panel discussions, open screenings, and dialogues held in New York City. Events began in 1975 and continue to the present; recordings in the collection date from 1977 and 2016. A smaller group of records include administrative files, panel flyers, three scrapbooks, as well as photographs, slides, and negatives of panel discussions and participants.