Smithsonian articles from January 2003

Smithsonian archives from January 2003

Lettuce all participate: the Italian avant-garde played with time, gravity and the boundary between art and us. (Around The Mall).
January 1, 2003... Ken Brannan, a Maryland caterer and coffee vendor, has something the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden needs. Not a Picasso. Not a Dubuffet. Certainly not a check upon which a stream of zeroes floats like the contrails of a Learjet. He has...

From the attic. (Around The Mall).
January 1, 2003... How many taxidermists does it take...? How many taxidermists does it take...? From his first day at the Smithsonian, March 1, 1908, taxidermist William L. Brown (far right, above) had a weighty goal: to successfully prepare a hippopotamus...

Enter Africa: in the reborn entry to the Museum of African Art, a five-minute film captures the face of Africa. (Around The Mall).
January 1, 2003... A fisherman flings a spidery net against a backdrop of blue water. Brightly costumed dancers cavort on stilts. A boy kneads a mound of clay with his feet. These images and others of a vast and varied continent, distilled into a five-minute film...

Who's counting? (Around The Mall).
January 1, 2003... 10,077 Orchids flourish in the Horticulture Services Division's greenhouses. Many of them will be on view January 18 to May 26 at the Arts and Industries Building in an exhibition called "Jewels of Nature."

Hurry in. (Around The Mall).
January 1, 2003... "Latin Jazz: La Combinacion Perfecta" closes at the Arts and Industries Building January 18. It then goes on a three-year tour, traveling first to Flushing Town Hall in Flushing, New York, where it will remain through June, and later to nine...

Visit the Smithsonian. (Around The Mall).
January 1, 2003... For a free Associates' planning packet, call Smithsonian Information, 202-357-2700 or 202-357- 1729 (TTY), 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Monday through Saturday, or send an e-mail to info@si.edu. information center: Upon arrival, stop at the Smithsonian...

Puzzle of the century: is it the fresh air, the seafood, or genes? Why do so many hardy 100-year-olds live in, yes, Nova Scotia?
January 1, 2003... MAYBE IT'S THAT HER FACE is so smooth and pink or the way she aims her green eyes right into yours, talking fast and crisply articulating each word. Her gestures are as nimble as a hatmaker's. You would be tempted to say Betty Cooper isn't a...

Magic kingdom: within the Adriatic fortress of Dubrovnik, cafes, churches and palaces reflect 1,000 years of turbulent history.
January 1, 2003... The fishermen had set the nets the night before and now, as the cathedral bells began to chime the start of a new day, they steered the small dory through Dubrovnik's harbor gate and into the Adriatic. The boat turned into the wind and churned...

Back to the future: Smithsonian returns to its classic design roots. (Editor's Note).
January 1, 2003... As you page through this issue, you may notice a few changes in the magazine's appearance, as we invoke the spirit of Smithsonian's founding designer, Bradbury Thompson, and reinterpret the elegant, uncluttered design he established more than...

Hamilton takes command: in 1775, the 20-year-old Alexander Hamilton took up arms to fight the British. Soon the brash young soldier would display the courage and savvy that would take him to the apex of power in the new U.S. government. (Book Excerpt).
January 1, 2003... "Alexander Hamilton is the least appreciated of the founding fathers because he never became president," says Willard Sterne Randall, a professor of humanities at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont, and the author of Alexander Hamilton: A...

Honky-tonk poet: fifty years after his death at 29, the music world still marvels at Hank Williams' homespun hits. (Tribute).
January 1, 2003... NEW YEAR'S EVE, 1952. The Cadillac and its hired driver were waiting in the frosty Tennessee night when the hotel porters guided an ailing Hank Williams into the backseat. He was on his way to yet another show in yet another state, but he was...

Taking stock of Hepburn: a renowned photographer, himself the subject of a memorable portrait, caught the beguiling ingenue just as her star was rising. (Indelible Images).
January 1, 2003... AUDREY HEPBURN was 24 and on the verge of movie stardom in October 1953, when a young photographer, barely a year older than she and heading for an acclaimed career of his own, took the picture at left. They were on the New York City set of...

Just looking.
January 1, 2003... SEEING EYE TO EYE Friday, September 27, 2002: Hundreds of protesters against the International Monetary Fund and World Bank were arrested in a park east of the White House. Angered by the arrests, another crowd blocked the street; mounted...

Man in the middle: travels with Kofi Annan.
January 1, 2003... THE TRIP WOULD TAKE Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General of the United Nations and a Nobel Peace laureate, first to Vienna for a meeting with Iraqi officials and then to Africa, where he would visit four nations in eight days to continue his...

Haiku history: a look at our past, / seventeen syllables and / three lines at a time. (The Last Page).
January 1, 2003... Big Bang or maybe six days of work, one of rest. Somehow, it begins. Dinosaurs tromp tromp, act tough, then die so Spielberg can win more Oscars. Homo erectus is Mr. Smarty No Pants: plays with...

Letters.
January 1, 2003... Readers respond to the November issue: HARLEM SCANDAL I FOUND "Coming Up Harlem," by Peter Hellman, disturbing because of the naivete in his glossy account of Harlem's second renaissance. The displacement of longtime residents and...

Life in the fast lane: Harry Truman's pals installed a bowling alley in the White House so the new president could escape the heat of the kitchen. (The Object At Hand).
January 1, 2003... IT SEEMED LIKE an appropriate 63rd birthday present for a rock-ribbed Missourian and plainspoken president with a "The Buck Stops Here" sign conspicuously displayed on his Oval Office desk. In 1947, at the suggestion of Harry S. Truman's...

Sea searchers: scientists launch a $1 billion effort to track marine life worldwide.
January 1, 2003... "THIS IS HARDER than it should be," Barbara Block muttered as she leaned over the gasping fish. Blood dripped from her left hand where the tuna's teeth had slashed her. Though covered from neck to toe in a neoprene wet suit, she shivered. ...

To catch a comet: the first spacecraft to land on an orbiting ice ball will dig for clues to the birth of the solar system and the origins of life on Earth. (Phenomena & Curiosities).
January 1, 2003... IF ALL GOES AS PLANNED, an Ariane-5 rocket will blast off from Kourou, French Guiana, this month and loft into space a truck-size contraption known as Rosetta. A project of the European Space Agency, which manages space exploration programs for...

Making whoopee: what do you call it when a pair of rare whooping cranes mate, nest and rear a chick in your backyard? Lucky. (Points Of Interest).
January 1, 2003... THE BACK PORCH of Gene and Tina Tindell's modest one-story house in central Florida overlooks a shallow lake the size of several football fields. Dyches Lake is virtually indistinguishable from thousands of others like it that pockmark the...

Big digs: with several major construction projects under way, the Smithsonian Institution is committing more resources than ever before to expanding its exhibition spaces. (From the Secretary).
January 1, 2003... The cranes you may see against the sky these days in Washington, D.C. have engines, not wings, but they're a beautiful sight nonetheless. The machines are evidence of a building boom that's taking the physical grandeur of the nation's capital...

Shadow wolves: an all-Indian Customs unit--possibly the world's best trackers--uses time-honored techniques to pursue smugglers along a remote stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border.
January 1, 2003... On a brick-oven hot morning somewhere southwest of Tucson, Arizona, U.S. Customs patrol officer Bryan Nez holds up a hand in caution. Dead ahead lies a heavy thicket, an ideal spot for an ambush by drug smugglers. Something has rousted a...

Amazing grace: a new book featuring many never-before-seen photographs of the Great Depression testifies to the resilience of the American spirit.
January 1, 2003... IT IS THE NATURE OF PHOTOGRAPHY--and a tribute to its power--that a few images can so capture the eye and dominate the memory that they form our sense of an event or era. When we think of World War II in the Pacific, we may see in our mind's...