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Category: Exhibitions

The ABC’s of the Corcoran Artist Files: the E’s

Image of an exhibition invitation to an Angna Enters exhibition at the Newhouse Galleries Inc. in New York, January 5th to February 14th, 1948.
Image of an exhibition invitation to an Angna Enters exhibition at the Newhouse Galleries Inc. in New York, January 5th to February 14th, 1948.

In the series called “The ABCs of the Corcoran Artist Files” the American Art and Portrait Gallery (AA/PG) Library will explore artists through the materials from the recent Corcoran Vertical File Collection donation by featuring artists whose surnames begin with that letter. This time we are looking at the artists whose last names that start with E.

John Lewis Childs: A Profile of an American Seedsman.

Cultivating America’s Gardens, our newest exhibition produced with Smithsonian Gardens is now open in the National Museum of American History and features many colorful seed catalogs from our collection. This post, highlighting seedsman John Lewis Childs,  was written by social media intern Trudi J. Antoine.

Portrait of John Lewis Childs, from his profile in The Condor, September 1907.Via the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

While some children played games and chased the pavement, John Lewis Childs pursued a dream of playing in the dirt. Starting from the ground up, horticulturist and businessman, John Lewis Childs made his way as a young lad to East Hinsdale, a town bordering Queens, New York, with only a glimmer of where his path would take him. He was only seventeen.

The Fix – Preparing an Exhibition Takes a Village

The Preservation Department of the Smithsonian Libraries (SIL) has been preparing materials for the past year for the upcoming exhibition in the SIL Gallery, National Museum of American History, Cultivating America’s Gardens.  Drawn mainly from the collections of the Smithsonian Libraries and Smithsonian’s Archives of American Gardens, it is a cooperative curatorial effort of both units.

Opening this week: Cultivating America’s Gardens

C. Ribsam & Sons trade card. Courtesy of Smithsonian Gardens.

Smithsonian Libraries and Smithsonian Gardens will present a new exhibition, “Cultivating America’s Gardens,” at the National Museum of American History May 4 through August 2018.

Amateurs and professionals, young and old, schoolchildren and scientists—Americans of every sort—have put their backs into gardening for a variety of motives: beauty, food, science and prestige. Americans garden to feed themselves and their families and to create a sense of place and beauty in their backyards and beyond. National parks, public parks and gardens and the individual plots of earth that people cultivate are all examples of their deep connections to the natural world. American garden making has evolved over time, shaped by history, social attitudes, the environment and new ideas.