Smithsonian articles from March 2002

Smithsonian archives from March 2002

Cheeky charmer : FOR HALF A CENTURY, PHOTOGRAPHER HARRY BENSON HAS BEEN TALKING HIS WAY TO THE TOP OF HIS GAME.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... If you look closely at the newsreels showing the Beatles' 1964 arrival at New York's JFK airport, a "fifth Beatle" follows the Fab Four out of the airplane. He is distinguished not by the mop top of his colleagues but by a '50s teddy boy...

The Birds of Heaven: Travels With Cranes.
March 1, 2002... The Birds of Heaven: Travels With Cranes Peter Matthiessen North Point Press, $27.50 Cranes' bodies are nearly as tall as humans'. Their colors make blue jays look dowdy, and their wings can carry these extraordinary creatures over...

The Bone Museum.
March 1, 2002... The Bone Museum Wayne Grady Four Walls Eight Windows, $24.95 The museum of the title is Earth, across which Canadian writer Wayne Grady roams in search of dinosaur fossils, contemplating the profound questions these discoveries raise....

Reading Pictures.
March 1, 2002... Reading Pictures Alberto Manguel Random House, $29.95 A cultural critic once noted the bobbing heads of people moving through an art museum, reading labels first and then gazing up at the pictures. Imagine a museum wall stripped of...

Pencil Pusher : TAKING NOTES OR SKETCHING, PAUL TRACHTMAN GETS THE LEAD OUT.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Longtime contributor and former Smithsonian editor Paul Trachtman is on a roll. In November he wrote about sculptor Alberto Giacometti. In January it was Louis Pasteur and the germ theory of disease. And in this issue he travels to Easter...

Mysterious Island : THE MORE WE LEARN ABOUT EASTER ISLAND, THE MORE IT INTRIGUES, AS A NEW EXHIBITION OF ITS ART REMINDS US.
March 1, 2002... "There exists in the midst of the great ocean, in a region where nobody goes, a mysterious and isolated island," wrote the 19th-century French seafarer and artist Pierre Loti. "The island is planted with monstrous great statues, the work of I...

Still Delightful : A SUMPTUOUS SHOW DOCUMENTS HOW THE IMPRESSIONISTS BREATHED NEW LIFE INTO THE STAID TRADITION OF STILL LIFE PAINTING.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... In 1880 the renowned french artist Edouard Manet was commissioned to paint a bunch of asparagus for financier Charles Ephrussi. A collector well known to the Impressionists, Ephrussi had agreed to pay 800 francs (roughly $1,700 today) for the...

Migrant Madonna.(tracking down the subject of Dorthea Lange's famous photograph)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... On a raw, soggy day in march 1936, Dorothea Lange was driving home to Berkeley after six weeks spent photographing migrant workers in California, New Mexico and Arizona. Her staff position at the Resettlement Administration (RA), an agency set...

Just looking.(surviving the volcano in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... When Mount Nyiragongo erupted January 17, a 200-foot-wide river of molten rock devastated Goma, one of the largest cities in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It split the city in half, setting off explosions, destroying homes, shops and public...

To the editor.(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2002... SILK ROBES AND CELL PHONES Frances fitzgerald displays subtle prejudices in her January 2002 article when she essentially dismisses southern Vietnam as inconsequential, although it has its own distinct culture and history. She also refers...

Flying High.(2002 Kite Festival in Washington, DC)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... "It's amazing," says drake Smith, "when you have 30,000 people gathered together on the Mall, their kites soaring in every direction." For a number of years now, the 55-year-old computer engineer has volunteered as one of the organizers behind...

Lady in Red.(Laura Bush's inaugural gown added to collection in National Museum of American History)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... First lady laura bush says she's proud that her inaugural gown joined a "collection that honors the many great American women in our history." Mrs. Bush's red Chantilly lace sheath is now on view at the National Museum of American History.

Anatomy of a Violin.(National Museum of Natural History's CT scanner used to examine rare musical instruments)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Whir and hum, hum and whir. On a top floor laboratory inside the National Museum of Natural History, a low-pitched thrum reverberates. Inside a 30- by 40-foot room, researchers hover over a CT scanner, then position on it an unlikely patient...

The Wright Stuff.(Russel Wright 's work exhibited at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Next time you stroll around Crate & Barrel or Pottery Barn, taking in the array of mass-produced, winningly displayed housewares and furnishings, note the homage due an influential, if little-known, American industrial designer. During the...

Visit the Smithsonian.
March 1, 2002... For a free Associates' planning packet, call Smithsonian Information, 202-357-2700 or 202-357-1729 (TTY), 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Monday-Friday; 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Saturday-Sunday, or send an e-mail to info@si.edu. INFORMATION CENTER Upon...

Bright Eyes.(Sumatran tiger born at National Zoo)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Berani (meaning brave), a tiger cub born September 18, increases to five the National Zoo's population of rare Sumatran great cats. On view for a few hours a day, the 34-pound male frolics alongside his mother, Soyono. "Every birth is...

Bequeathed to History.('Legacies: Collecting America's History at the Smithsonian')(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Who hasn't avowed, in a moment of sentiment, that one or another of his or her special things belongs in the Smithsonian? Of course, the Institution can't absorb every offer. The National Museum of American History alone already counts some 3.2...

At the Renwick.("Wood Turning since 1930," at Renwick Gallery)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... The demanding craft of creating turned-wood objects, cut from that unforgiving material as it spins on a lathe, was once confined largely to high school shop classes, the home workshop or the factory. But for 70 or more years now, artisans...

Symbols in the Sand.(Tibetan Buddhist monks construct sand manadala at Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Chalk, modeling clay and 20 bowls of brightly colored sand might sound more playful than prayerful. But not for a band of Tibetan Buddhist monks, who gathered this January in the depths of the Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, there to...

Collecting Family Silver : THE SMITHSONIAN RECOGNIZES THE DISTINCTIVE JEWELRY OF THREE GENERATIONS OF SOUTHWESTERN SILVERSMITHS.(Smithsonian American Art Museum buys three bracelets made by Patania family)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Bent over a scarred wooden workbench laden with shears, files and other tools of his trade, Sam Patania snips sterling silver wire and sheet into tiny strips, ovals and crescents. Wearing jeans, a button-down shirt and magnifying glasses,...

Flights of Fancy : ORLANDO MARTINEZ, WHO LIVES AND BREATHES THE AGE-OLD SPORT OF PIGEON RACING, GOES FOR THE MAIN EVENT.
March 1, 2002... It is October 21, and Orlando Martinez is pacing the roof of his brooklyn town house, a cell phone pressed to one ear, a cordless phone to the other, while his girlfriend, Omayra Reyes, fidgets on a lawn chair nearby. Across the East River the...

Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a planet! It's a . . . very large ball of ice! (It's Pluto, with its moon, Charon).
March 1, 2002... You might call Pluto the black sheep of the planet family. Or, its favorite child. Of late, the solar system's smallest planet is experiencing something of an identity crisis as it orbits at the center of an impassioned debate. A handful of...

Mountain Makeover : NEW HAMPSHIRE'S MOUNTAIN VIEW HOUSE IS BACK IN BUSINESS, STILL GRAND--BUT NO LONGER SNOBBISH.(restoration of resort built in 1886)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... The first time i saw the mountain view house I could almost feel its pain. The veranda sagged, paint was peeling, the lawn was a mess. It reminded me of a down-at-the-heels dowager barely able to stand unaided. That was a year ago. I was...

Other People's Words : THOUGH SOME WRITERS MAY SHRUG IT OFF AS THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY, PLAGIARISM IS HARDLY A MINOR MENACE.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Imagine yourself a high school history teacher who has been handed a research paper on air combat during World War II by one of your better students. In it, you come upon the following sentence, without quotation marks: "No amount of practice...

NEW ROUTES TO OLD ROOTS : TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AFTER ALEX HALEY'S BEST-SELLER TOPPED THE CHARTS, MILLIONS OF AMERICANS ARE USING HIGH-TECH TOOLS TO FIND THEIR ANCESTORS.
March 1, 2002... It's 7:20 on an October morning in Salt Lake City, and 53 people are already lined up outside a building on West Temple Street, burdened with boxes and wheeled luggage. "It's terrific, just terrific," says a woman in line about the delights...

Dust-Free Art : from the secretary.(Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... It's not a common enough invitation: "let's go to the Smithsonian to see the de Koonings"--or the Bacons, Gorkys and Rodins, or any number of paintings and works of sculpture by 20th-century masters (Picasso, Giacometti, Lichtenstein, Hopper,...

Curios? UNTOUCHABLE PORCELAIN MEETS FLUTTERING PIGEONS.
March 1, 2002... Our next-door neighbors in transylvania in the 1950s were a nice German couple who had two well-behaved and clean kids, my friend Peter and his sister, Greta, with whom I was in love. At their house you had to take off your shoes at the door,...

Lofty Aspirations : AND YOU THOUGHT TREE CLIMBING WAS FOR KIDS. MORE AND MORE GROWN-UPS ARE SCALING THE PLANET'S TALLEST LIVING ORGANISMS.
March 1, 2002... Peter Jenkins has climbed just about every type of large tree that grows in the United States, sometimes to lop off a limb that threatens an electrical line, other times to rescue a cat or a pet parrot or iguana or boa constrictor. A certified...