Smithsonian articles from January 1995

Smithsonian archives from January 1995

Smithsonian perspectives: the modern museum trend toward interpretive exhibitions presents both challenges and opportunities. (Column)
January 1, 1995... Last month in this column I stated that the Smithsonian's new National Museum of the American Indian is coping well with the three major challenges that the whole Institution faces in this era: enhancing private fundraising, dealing with...

Phenomena, comment and notes. (comet collision with Jupiter) (Column)
January 1, 1995... Both morning stars this month are, as always, actually planets: in this case Jupiter and Venus. Jupiter is so big that it can fairly be called a "failed star" (SMITHSONIAN, September 1974). Anyone who was around last summer, however, now probably...

The Battle of Lake Erie. (War of 1812)
January 1, 1995... Many who lived at the time noted--as have most subsequent historians--that the War of 1812 was a festival of contradictions, anomalies and absurdities. It was the first war that the new United States of America declared, and arguably the most...

Giving new life to Haida art and the culture it expresses.
January 1, 1995... Wearing a blue denim shirt and clean faded jeans, his black hair gently edged with gray, Robert Davidson sits on a metal-framed wicker chair and paints with a sure flowing hand the canvas that rests on the top of a short aluminum ladder in front...

Any way you slice it, a Poilane loaf is real French bread. (Poilane bakery, Paris, France) (Cover Story)
January 1, 1995... One wintry afternoon some years ago, an Air France steward on a stopover in Moscow was strolling with a Russian acquaintance when his eye caught a pleasantly familiar sight: there, in the display window of the Tass press agency, was a photograph...

Mrs. Malaprop's mangled prose set a president. (English language blunders)
January 1, 1995... Mrs. Malaprop sails onto the stage in Act One, her spinnaker flying madly. At once she assails her niece, the lissome Lydia Languish, who has fallen for an apparently impecunious sailor. Lydia must promise to forget this fellow, Mrs. M. commands:...

Believe it or not, Rip was almost as odd as his 'items.' (cartoonist Robert LeRoy Ripley)
January 1, 1995... In the mid-1930s, when Robert LeRoy (Believe It or Not!) Ripley was riding the highest crest of his fame as a cartoonist, showman, impresario of the outlandish and merchant of the strange, the lads of the New York Boys Club were polled on whose...

In the pursuit of perfect craft: an artisan's lifework. (basketmaker Hiroshima Kazuo)(Smithsonian Institution's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, D.C.)
January 1, 1995... Deep in the mountain fastness of southern Japan's Hinokage region lies a country of swift rivers, deep valleys and verdant forests. The rugged terrain is punctuated by terraced-hillside farmsteads and remote hamlets that lay for at least five...

Doctors on Horseback.
January 1, 1995... The woman in the backwoods Kentucky cabin had been suffering excruciating labor pains, but still the baby wouldn't come. When the ninth and then the tenth month passed with no sign of birth, her doctors summoned the surgeon said to be the best on...

As Long As Life.
January 1, 1995... The woman in the backwoods Kentucky cabin had been suffering excruciating labor pains, but still the baby wouldn't come. When the ninth and then the tenth month passed with no sign of birth, her doctors summoned the surgeon said to be the best on...

How Sheriff Bob made me into an explorer of the world beyond TV.
January 1, 1995... I had a regular routine as a fifth-grader. After school, I declined to participate in healthy outdoor activities and settled down in front of the TV. My favorite program then--and to this day--was the afternoon Western movie, hosted by Col. Tim...