On National Agriculture Day, the museum is unveiling a new website where the public can upload stories about technologies and innovation that have changed their work lives in agriculture—stories about precision farming, food-borne illness tracking, environmental concerns, government practices, irrigation, biotechnology and hybrid seeds.

There will be a demonstration of the website and a display of new artifacts, including a GPS tractor guidance system, a saddle and branding iron from a Hawaiian cowboy, dairy implements, one of the first computerized crop traceability systems and signs related to no-till production and organic farming. Gems from the collection will be on view, including Eli Whitney’s cotton gin model.

American agriculture has gone through a tremendous transformation, and this project is an effort by the museum to reach out to farmers, ranchers and American agri-business to preserve the stories of America’s agricultural heritage and to add objects that reflect modern agricultural practices. The new website is part of the “American Enterprise” exhibition planning. The exhibition, scheduled to open in 2015, will focus on agriculture, finance, manufacturing, retail and information technology.

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The Smithsonian Associates and the Creativity Foundation have named Bill Drayton the recipient of the 13th annual Benjamin Franklin Creativity Laureate Award in honor of his pioneering work in social entrepreneurship and public service. Drayton will discuss how his work has challenged and expanded the definition of traditional social philanthropy with David Bornstein, author of How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Friday, April 19, at 7 p.m. in the National Museum of Natural History’s Baird Auditorium.

The Benjamin Franklin Creativity Laureate Award recognizes and celebrates influential thinkers, innovators and catalysts in the arts, sciences and humanities, in both traditional and emerging disciplines. Previous recipients were Yo-Yo Ma, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Eric Kandel, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Jules Feiffer, Ted Turner, Lisa Randall, Meryl Streep, Greg Mortenson, Johnnetta Betsch Cole and Mark Morris. Tickets are $25 for general admission and $18 for Associate members. For tickets the public may call (202) 633-3030 or visit www.smithsonianassociates.org.

Drayton is founder and CEO of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public. By funding and supporting social entrepreneurs—men and women with system-changing solutions that address the world’s most pressing problems—Drayton has had a direct impact on innovations and policies that have been spearheaded by more than 3,000 changemakers in more than 70 countries. Ashoka’s investments yield extraordinary returns in every area of human need, from human rights to the environment, from economic development to young people. The vision of Ashoka is a world where citizens think and act as changemakers.

The Benjamin Franklin Creativity Laureate Award is made possible by the Creativity Collaboration, a joint program of The Smithsonian Associates and the Creativity Foundation. For information about the Creativity Foundation, visit http://www.creativity-found.org/.

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This spring, the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden offers a range of educational programs that invite audiences to engage with artists, curators and works on view on a deeper level. All programs are free and in the Ring Auditorium, unless otherwise noted.

Meet the Artist: Flatform
Thursday, March 14; 7 p.m.
“A Meditation on Imaginary Landscapes” Founded in 2007 and based in Berlin and Milan, Flatform is a media-arts collective that creates time-based works, film events and installations, many of which revolve around landscape and biopolitics. Their award-winning shorts have been featured in festivals worldwide, as well as in the Hors Pistes celebration of moving-image works organized by the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The artists will present an overview of their work to date. Presented in conjunction with the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital.

Meet the Artist: Christo
Wednesday, March 27; 6:30 p.m.
“Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Two Works in Progress” Early in his career, Christo created actual-size reinterpretations of commercial displays such as Green Storefront, included in the new Hirshhorn exhibition “Out of the Ordinary.” He and his wife, Jeanne-Claude, went on to develop public art projects that involved wrapping pieces of architecture in fabric or intervening in the landscape on a grand scale. In this evening’s lecture, Christo discusses two ongoing projects: “Over the River,” 5.9 miles of fabric panels to be temporarily suspended above 42 miles of the Arkansas River in Colorado, and “The Mastaba,” the largest sculpture in the world and the pair’s only permanent large-scale work, to be located near Abu Dhabi.

Busboys and Poets “Belief+Doubt” Poetry Event
Friday, April 12; 8 p.m.
Hirshhorn Lobby and Lower Level
$10 Advance Tickets Required
Busboys and Poets, a Washington, D.C.-area group of restaurants and multicultural arts venues, presents a poetry showcase in celebration of “Belief+Doubt,” Barbara Kruger’s site-specific installation on the Hirshhorn’s Lower Level. Performances will include local masters of slam, spoken-word, American Sign Language, literary and teen poetry. Tickets are required and must be purchased in advance at busboysandpoets.com.

2013 James T. Demetrion Lecture: Jeff Koons
Thursday, April 18; 7 p.m.
Internationally recognized artist Jeff Koons is best known for public works such as the large-scale floral installation “Puppy.” His ironically monumental reimaginings of banal subjects such as inflatable toys and kitschy photos and his appropriations of commercial imagery have been exhibited worldwide. Based on a re-creation of a destroyed late-19th-century original, Koons’ stainless steel sculpture “Kiepenkerl” is currently on view at the entrance to the Hirshhorn’s sculpture garden.

Curator’s Tour of “Over, Under, Next: Experiments in Mixed Media, 1913–Present”
Wednesday, April 24; 7 p.m.
Second Level
Associate curator Evelyn Hankins discusses ways in which artists from almost every major art movement over the past century—from cubism, dada and surrealism through abstract expressionism, pop and post-modernism—have made use of unorthodox and incongruous materials to subvert conventional definitions of art. “Over, Under, Next,” the first in a series of permanent collection-related exhibitions leading up to the museum’s 40th anniversary in 2014, opens April 18.

About the Hirshhorn

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Smithsonian’s museum of international modern and contemporary art, has nearly 12,000 paintings, sculptures, photographs, mixed-media installations, works on paper and new media works in its collection. The Hirshhorn presents diverse exhibitions and offers an array of public programs that explore modern and contemporary art. Located at Independence Avenue and Seventh Street S.W., the museum is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. (closed Dec. 25). Admission to the galleries and special programs is free. For more information about exhibitions and events, visit hirshhorn.si.edu. Follow the Hirshhorn on Facebook at facebook.com/hirshhorn and on Twitter at twitter.com/hirshhorn. Or sign up for the museum’s eBlasts at hirshhorn.si.edu/collection/social-media. To request accessibility services, contact Kristy Maruca at marucak@si.edu or (202) 633-2796, preferably two weeks in advance.

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“Over, Under, Next: Experiments in Mixed Media, 1913–Present,” an exhibition of approximately 100 works drawn largely from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden’s collection, runs April 18 through Sept. 8. The first in a series of permanent collection-related exhibitions leading up to the museum’s 40th anniversary in 2014, “Over, Under, Next” surveys an era in which the definition and scope of art were continually expanded through the avant-garde’s embrace of “non-art” materials. Artists from virtually every major movement of the past century—from cubism, dada and surrealism through abstract expressionism, pop and post-modernism—participated in the revolution. The exhibition tracks the development of the elements of mixed media, from the wood grain-printed paper of Georges Braque to the beaded Easter baskets of Nick Cave. The roster of unorthodox and incongruous materials includes butterfly wings, glass shards, crumpled automotive metal, jigsaw puzzle pieces, clothing, furniture and colored sand.

Artworks and decorative items incorporating glued paper or found objects predate modernism, but the birth of collage as a medium in which remnants of the everyday are often jarringly juxtaposed with products of the artist’s hand is credited to Braque. In 1912, having worked for several years alongside Pablo Picasso in the development of analytic cubism, Braque began to incorporate swatches of printed paper and oil cloth into his pictures. His “Aria de Bach” (1913), on loan from the National Gallery of Art, was made the year after he created the first “papier collé” (literally, “pasted paper”).

An innovator of photomontage who helped establish collage as an art form primarily inspired by mass media, Hannah Höch instead drew inspiration from her employment as a designer of embroidery and lace patterns for “Tailor’s Flower” (1920). The work incorporates fragments of sewing patterns into a lyrical abstraction that magnifies the language of collage, allowing it to encompass a range of sources, including domestic handicraft.

The richly referential nature of collage and its three-dimensional analogue, assemblage, lent itself naturally to the dreamlike compositions of surrealism. Comprising colored sand, seashells and seaweed, André Masson’s “Caryatid” (1939) is envisioned as a creature of the sea, more mermaid than monument. In “Nut Girls” (1941), Man Ray playfully tweaked the female form, using two walnut halves—one actual, the other a photograph—as the head and torso, respectively, of two figures. In his box constructions, Joseph Cornell staged private fantasies of glamour, time travel and bookish reverie, combining maps, art reproductions and other printed ephemera with precise arrangements of objects treasured by the artist. Evocative of theatrical tableaux or cabinets of curiosities, these works suggest undisclosed narratives.

Although frequently thought of in terms of painting, abstract expressionism also produced sculpture of great distinction. With its sense of spontaneous creation, John Chamberlain’s “Untitled” (1961), made of twisted metal from junked cars, has the dynamism and directness of a painting by Willem de Kooning or Franz Kline, who is represented in “Over, Under, Next” by the painted collage “Untitled” (1948). Bridging the divide between painting and sculpture, and between abstract expressionism and pop, are the “Combines” of Robert Rauschenberg. Incorporating two- and three-dimensional elements—torn posters, newspaper clippings, a metal cap, the rear of a pair of pants—many of which the artist collected on the streets of his Lower Manhattan neighborhood, “Dam” (1966) invites viewers to make unexpected connections between word and image, art and everyday life.

The materials of assemblage can be boldly literal, like the heavy iron cylinder that rests atop the red plywood box of Donald Judd’s minimalist “Untitled” (1963), or they can be obliquely suggestive, as in Eva Hesse’s post-minimalist “Vertiginous Detour” (1966), which dangles a cord-bedecked papier-mâché sphere from the ceiling in a fishnet bag.

Stan Brakhage compounded the literal use of materials with the fragmented passing of time when he employed a motion-picture projector to animate collaged elements in “Mothlight” (1963), a milestone in the history of experimental film. Many of his short films are painstakingly composed by hand, frame by frame, rather than photographed. For “Mothlight” he sandwiched a long stream of insect parts, plant fragments and other detritus between two filmstrips before running it through an optical printer, creating a flickering abstraction directly from the shadows of natural components.

In the media age, previously recorded images and sound became fodder for manipulation, and montage took its place beside collage and assemblage as a technique for recombining the new raw materials of daily life. Bruce Conner’s groundbreaking short “Report” (1967) weaves together film and audio documentation of the John F. Kennedy assassination with other found footage. The culmination of three years of editing, it is a potent examination of how mass media breeds meaning.

During the civil rights era, African American artists such as Lois Mailou Jones and Romare Bearden used the clamorous energy of collage to convey the political tenor of fractious times. Bearden, in particular, extended the range of his collage works to depict large swaths of history, both ancient and modern.

Thirty years later, Colombian artist Doris Salcedo repurposed used furniture to respond indirectly to the wave of abduction, torture and mass murder that gripped her country. For “Untitled” (1995), she married a second-hand armoir to a bed frame, then filled the cavities with cement, in mute memorial to the “desaparecidos” (“disappeared”). “Used materials are profoundly human,” Salcedo has said. “They all bespeak the presence of a human being.”

Installation artists’ conception of art as a site for interaction with the viewer led to the development of immersive assemblages scaled to the human body. The closed-off vitrines of Damien Hirst’s “The Asthmatic Escaped II” (1992) suggest the confines from which a prisoner has mysteriously vanished; according to the artist, the work’s title refers to British painter Francis Bacon, an asthmatic who died the year this work was made. Although it too contains a vitrine, in this case filled with live snails feeding on cabbages, “palimpsest” (1989), by Ann Hamilton, in collaboration with Kathryn Clark, welcomes visitors inside a specially appointed room to view it. The space is lined with pieces of newsprint bearing hand-copied excerpts from private and public memoirs. This work, too, has a biographical reference, having been inspired by the story of an elderly man who covered the walls of his home with notecards, bolstering his fading memory with reminders to himself.

By expanding the range of materials available for their work, artists using techniques of collage, assemblage and montage have enriched the language of art and extended its potential to comment upon life.

“Over, Under, Next” is organized by associate curator Evelyn Hankins.

Related Programs

The Hirshhorn offers a range of interactive educational experiences designed to engage people of all interest levels in contemporary art. On Friday, May 17, at 7 p.m., in the Ring Auditorium, Ann Hamilton will present the latest in the Hirshhorn’s ongoing series of Meet the Artist lectures. Artists, scholars and other experts address “Over, Under, Next” in depth in several Friday Gallery Talks; visit hirshhorn.si.edu for a complete schedule. The museum’s library of podcasts, archived on its website, makes gallery walk-throughs and interviews with artists accessible internationally.

About the Hirshhorn

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Smithsonian’s museum of international modern and contemporary art, has nearly 12,000 paintings, sculptures, photographs, mixed-media installations, works on paper and new media works in its collection. The Hirshhorn presents diverse exhibitions and offers an array of public programs that explore modern and contemporary art. Located at Independence Avenue and Seventh Street S.W., the museum is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. (closed Dec. 25). Admission to the galleries and special programs is free. For more information about exhibitions and events, visit hirshhorn.si.edu. Follow the Hirshhorn on Facebook at facebook.com/hirshhorn and on Twitter at twitter.com/hirshhorn. Or sign up for the museum’s eBlasts at hirshhorn.si.edu/collection/social-media. To request accessibility services, contact Kristy Maruca at marucak@si.edu or (202) 633-2796, preferably two weeks in advance.

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The 2013 Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum Trophy will be awarded in the Lifetime Achievement category to Joseph Sutter and in the Current Achievement category to the Mars Science Laboratory Entry, Descent, and Landing Team. They will be presented their awards April 24 at a black-tie dinner in Washington, D.C.

Established in 1985, the award recognizes outstanding achievements in the fields of aerospace science and technology and their history. As in past years, Trophy winners receive a miniature version of “The Web of Space,” a sculpture by artist John Safer.

“The winners of the 2013 Trophy Awards have achieved feats of engineering that appeared to be impossible,” said Gen. J.R. “Jack” Dailey, director of the museum. “Joe Sutter is the ‘Father of the 747,’ an airliner that revolutionized the commercial aviation industry; the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover’s intricate and impeccably executed landing on Mars had crowds cheering for science in Times Square and will enable scientific discoveries for years to come.”

2013 Trophy Award Winners

The 2013 Lifetime Achievement winner, Sutter, helped revolutionize air travel as chief project engineer for the Boeing 747, the world’s first wide-body “jumbo jet.” He managed a team of thousands, nicknamed “The Incredibles,” who met the enormous challenge of building an all-new airliner—then the largest—in record time. More than 40 years after the 747 entered service, the latest version of this timeless design, the 747-8 series, has taken flight. Sutter joined Boeing as a mechanic and, after World War II, became an aerodynamicist working on the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser and the classic jet airliners, the 707, 727 and 737. He eventually became executive vice president for engineering and new product development. In retirement he shares his expertise in the Boeing Senior Advisory Group. Sutter’s legacy of excellence and dedication as “Father of the 747” lives on.

The Current Achievement winner can be summarized in two words: sky crane. This phrase embodied the audacious plan that the Entry, Descent, and Landing team devised to deliver the heaviest man-made object yet sent to Mars: the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover. On August 5, 2012 (PDT), the extremely complex EDL sequence executed flawlessly, bringing Curiosity to a precision landing inside Gale crater. These activities took seven minutes to complete, but because Mars was then 14 light-minutes from Earth, Curiosity had to perform everything without further commands. The science that Curiosity will reveal during the coming years is possible only because the EDL team ensured that the new landing system worked—perfectly—entirely on its own. Thanks to this success, the “fun” part of the Curiosity mission is underway.

More information about the National Air and Space Museum Trophy and a complete list of past winners are available at Trophy.

The National Air and Space Museum Trophy event is made possible through the generous support of BAE Systems, The Hillside Foundation, Atlas Air Worldwide, The Claude Moore Charitable Foundation, Cubic Corporation and Pratt & Whitney.

The National Air and Space Museum building on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., is located at Sixth Street and Independence Avenue S.W. The museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center is located in Chantilly, Va., near Washington Dulles International Airport. Both facilities are open daily from 10 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. (closed Dec. 25). Admission is free, but there is a $15 fee for parking at the Udvar-Hazy Center.

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Edo-period Japan (1615–1868) was an age of great social and political change—and of epic book consumption—that gave rise to an unprecedented “reading culture” of artists, writers and publishers. Similar to blogging and e-publication in the 21st century, illustrated books (ehon) in Edo-period Japan evolved quickly into a new cultural commons and a way to share ideas. The Pulverer collection’s first exhibition since its acquisition, “Hand-Held: Gerhard Pulverer’s Japanese Illustrated Books,” on view April 6–Aug. 11, explores this revolution in both artistic expression and commercial trade.

The more than 100 volumes on view will be organized similar to a modern-day bookstore, allowing visitors to browse a wide variety of topics, including design, crafts, botany, travelogues, scholarly texts and poetry, as well as works by celebrated artists Hokusai and Utamaro. The exhibition will be accompanied by a full range of museum programs in honor of the National Cherry Blossom Festival, including an opening weekend celebration of Japanese art and design (April 5–7), Japanese book-binding workshops and an annual anime festival (April 13–14).

Media should RSVP to PressAsia@si.edu and notify staff in advance of any recording and filming needs.

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The Smithsonian’s National Zoo is mourning the loss of a 16-year-old female maned wolf named Diamantina, who died March 8. A final pathology report will provide more information in the coming weeks.

The median life expectancy of a wild maned wolf is usually about 13 years; for a zoo wolf, that number can be 16 years. Maned wolves inhabit the grasslands and scrub forests of central South America. The International Union for Conservation of Nature classifies this species as near threatened due to habitat loss and motor vehicle strikes.

Diamantina arrived at the National Zoo’s Cheetah Conservation Station in October 2009 from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Va. Most zoo animals participate in a breeding program called the Species Survival Plan. The SSP scientists determine which animals to breed by considering their genetic makeup, nutritional and social needs, temperament and overall health. Rather than breed, Diamantina served as a non-breeding companion for Siete, the Zoo’s 10-year-old male maned wolf. She also acted as an educational ambassador for her species, illustrating the social nature and behavior of maned wolves to scientists, keepers and Zoo visitors. Smithsonian’s National Zoo visitors can see Siete on exhibit at the Cheetah Conservation Station.

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Smithsonian Theaters will launch the giant-screen film, The Ultimate Wave Tahiti, Friday, March 15, at the Johnson IMAX Theater in the National Museum of Natural History. Iconic surfer Kelly Slater emerges in his first ever 3-D IMAX film appearance in veteran director Stephen Low’s production, The Ultimate Wave Tahiti. The visually captivating film seeks to explain the confluence of natural forces that control wave creation in the oceans. Slater and Tahitian waterman Raimana Van Bastolaer take on Tahiti’s most extreme surf break, known as Teahupo’o, in this epic visual experience that brings science and the quest for the perfect wave to life.

“The film attempts to convey the idea that no two waves are the same,” said director Stephen Low. “Yet, all waves share common traits. Like Kelly Slater himself, the epitome of what the best surfer in the world should be in terms of athletic prowess, intelligence and courage, to many the wave at Teahupo’o is indeed the ‘ultimate wave.’”

According to the world’s most accomplished surfers, Teahupo’o is truly a unique ocean wave, and the perfect classroom to discuss the mystery that is a wave. An educational guide for use in area schools accompanies the film.

Modern surfing and its culture often mention the search for the perfect wave. This quest is sometimes misunderstood by those not immersed in surf culture or uninformed about the ocean and waves. The Ultimate Wave Tahiti aims to change that. As key personalities in the film, Slater and Von Bastolaer help explain where waves come from, why they are important and how communities and people far from the ocean shore are affected by the ocean’s interplay within the ecosystem. With the use of advanced animation techniques and science support from the National Oceanic and   Atmospheric Administration and other authorities, Slater’s hands-on wave experience is woven together with profound scientific insights.

Slater’s impressive resume lends weight to his insights and credibility to his film role as lecturer and ocean authority. His 10 world championships, the most won by any surfer, give Slater a platform from which he frequently influences the sport and surfing lifestyle. Slater recently donated one of his winning surfboards to the sports collections at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

Executive produced by K2 Communications, The Ultimate Wave Tahiti 3-D, is the first giant-screen film to use extreme surfing to explain the complex science of waves.

Individual tickets for The Ultimate Wave Tahiti are on sale now and may be purchased up to two weeks in advance. Groups of 10 or more may reserve tickets now for any date during the film’s expected run. The public may visit any Smithsonian Theaters box office, call toll-free (866) 868-7774 or visit www.si.edu/IMAX for information or to purchase tickets.

The Johnson IMAX Theater is located on the first floor of the National Museum of Natural History at 10th Street and Constitution Avenue N.W. The theater’s 84-by-61-foot screen is the largest in Washington, D.C.

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The Smithsonian has selected New York-based BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group to develop a master plan for its oldest buildings on the south side of the National Mall—the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Castle, National Museum of African Art, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the S. Dillon Ripley Center, the Arts and Industries Building and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. The goal of the project, expected to take between one and two years, is to enhance visitors’ experience by improving orientation and amenities, creating connections between the buildings, clarifying entrances and more actively engaging the two-thirds of visitors who enter the museums from the Mall.

 BIG founding partner, 38-year-old Bjarke Ingels, is known for his innovative design, respect for history and commitment to sustainable architecture. Much of the firm’s work reflects its interest in public spaces, cultural facilities and complex urban sites. The new Danish Maritime Museum, scheduled to open this summer at the UNESCO World Heritage site of Hamlet’s Kronborg Castle, was designed by BIG to preserve existing views of the landmark. The museum is built entirely underground surrounding an old dry dock on the site, which has been transformed into a dynamic public space that brings daylight deep into the building.

The Danish Pavilion at the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, designed by BIG, showcased sustainability and energy solutions as integral aspects of the Danish lifestyle. It included a dramatic continuous spiral ramp that allowed bicyclists to ride to the top of the building and 300 city bikes that were free to be used by visitors to the Expo.

Recently the firm has designed a mile-long public park in a multiethnic Copenhagen neighborhood that celebrates diversity by incorporating street furniture, signage and objects from around the world. It was awarded a 2013 American Institute of Architects Honor Award and is on the short list for Design of the Year by the Design Museum in London. Other projects have earned awards and international attention.

“Everything BIG designs is innovative, analytical, unexpected and intelligent,” said Christopher Lethbridge, Smithsonian project manager. “We believe they can develop a plan that will enable us over the next decade to transform a disparate group of much-loved buildings and outdoor spaces into a place that is more dynamic, social and active.”

“It’s a great honor and a humbling challenge to be invited to reimagine one of the most significant American institutions on the front lawn of the nation’s capital,” Ingels said. “The abundance of historical heritage, the diversity of architectural languages and the cacophony of programs are tied together by a labyrinthine network of spaces above and below ground—inside and outside. Our task is to explore the spaces with the Smithsonian and together attempt to untie the Gordian Knot to unearth the full potential of this treasure chamber of artifacts.” 

The BIG team will include Surface Design (landscape), Traceries (historic preservation), Robert Silman Associates (structural), Atelier Ten (sustainability), GHT Limited (MEP), Wiles Mensch (civil), Weidlinger Associates (security/anti-terrorism) VJ Associates (cost), Protection Engineering Group (fire/life safety) and FDS Design Studio (food services).

The Smithsonian’s request for proposals was issued in spring 2012 and 30 firms responded. A selection committee of Smithsonian staff narrowed the group down to six firms, including BIG, that were asked to make presentations at the Smithsonian. BIG was officially awarded the $2.4 million contract March 12.

The design teams were evaluated on the quality and quantity of relevant experience. They needed to demonstrate an ability to successfully balance innovative design with historic buildings, and they needed experience in the design of public spaces, landscape architecture, historic preservation, security design and sustainable design.

BIG has not been asked to design a building for the Smithsonian. They will be asked to take a fresh look at the uses of the buildings and the connections among them, identify ways to improve the quality of indoor and outdoor public and staff spaces, and help the Smithsonian engage its visitors. After the master plan is approved, fundraising for the South Mall project will begin.

The Smithsonian will ask the architectural firm to address a number of issues related to the buildings that stretch from Seventh to 12th streets S.W.

• The Castle’s historic Mall entrance reflects the character of the Smithsonian in the 19th century but cannot adequately welcome today’s millions of visitors or provide an appropriate introduction to the vast Smithsonian.

• The once grand public spaces in the Castle have been cut up into small staff offices that have failing heating, cooling and electrical systems.

• Behind the Castle, the National Museum of African Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, with their world-class collections, are nearly invisible from the Mall.

• The Ripley Center’s windowless underground classrooms are inadequate for the Smithsonian’s dynamic and growing education programs.

• Connections between these buildings, the Freer, the Arts and Industries Building and the Hirshhorn Gallery are almost nonexistent; blank walls and closed entrances force visitors to leave the campus to move from one museum to another.

• The gardens around the buildings could be active spaces with cafes and other areas for public events and activities.

According to Lethbridge, the challenge is to reenergize and connect these buildings, ranging from the red sandstone Castle, which opened in 1855, to the circular concrete Hirshhorn Museum, built in1974, with one another and make them reflect today’s Smithsonian vision while honoring its original mission to engage the public.

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The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and the Smithsonian Latino Center in Washington, D.C., present “Cerámica de los Ancestros: Central America’s Past Revealed,” a new major bilingual exhibition opening March 29. This exhibition illuminates Central America’s vibrant ancestral heritage. For thousands of years, Central American has been home to complex civilizations, each with unique, sophisticated ways of life, value systems and arts. The ceramics these diverse communities left behind, combined with recent archaeological discoveries, help tell the stories of these cultures and their achievements. The exhibition examines seven regions representing distinct Central American cultural areas that are today part of Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama. The exhibition will be open through Feb. 1, 2015, in the third level W. Richard West Jr. Contemporary Arts Gallery.

“This is our first major exhibition that examines our remarkable Central American collection, which is world class based on its sheer size and the fact that these are whole and intact objects,” said Kevin Gover (Pawnee), director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. “It also marks the first time that we have created a bilingual exhibition that will increase our scholarship and outreach to an entirely new audience.”

“This exhibition is an invaluable opportunity to share an incredible Smithsonian collection with Washington’s largest Latino population—los centroamericanos,” said Latino Center Director Eduardo Díaz. “We are inviting them to discover their cultural legacy within the walls of the nation’s museum.”

Based on more than two years of research on the museum’s Central American ceramics collections sponsored by the Smithsonian Latino Center, curator Ann McMullen and guest curator Alexander Villa Benitez of George Mason University have selected more than 160 objects from the museum’s collection of more than 12,000 ceramic pieces from the region, augmenting this selection with significant examples of work in gold, jade, copper, marble, shell and stone. Together, these objects span the period from 1000 B.C. to the present and illustrate the richness, complexity and dynamic qualities of Central American civilizations that were connected to peoples in South America, Mesoamerica and the Caribbean through social and trade networks that shared knowledge, technology, artworks and systems of status and political organization.

The exhibition is accompanied by an interactive website that includes 3-D images of select objects and a landmark publication, Revealing Ancestral Central America edited by Rosemary A. Joyce, along with a bilingual children’s activity book and family guide. A full schedule of educational and public programs will include a symposium in September 2013, featuring leading voices on the interpretation and recovery of the region’s rich indigenous heritage, along with hands-on demonstrations, films, concerts and extended programming throughout the run of the exhibition.

“Cerámica de los Ancestros” represents a pioneering effort to promote a better understanding of the early lives of Central America’s Native peoples and engage new Latino audiences, especially los centroamericanos, who predominate in the Latino community of the greater Washington, D.C., area and consider these civilizations as part of their national and cultural heritage.

For more information and program schedules, visit www.AmericanIndian.si.edu.

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