The collection at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Library focuses on design and decorative arts. We house hundreds of reference and book materials used by researchers, scholars and students alike. more »
Category: History and Culture
How can a magazine show the range and depth of grief? In perhaps the most grievous moment of recent memory, the attacks of September 11th, 2001, the mourning in America more »
Washing clothes is a common, everyday task, and modern washing machines and dryers have made this chore much quicker. With the aid of the Trade Literature Collection, let’s go back to the late 19th Century for a small glimpse into the types of machines they used for laundry back then.
This post was written by Marni Libby, a student of linguistics at Syracuse University and a Summer 2019 intern at the Vine Deloria Jr. Library, National Museum of the American more »
It is a truth universally acknowledged that of all creatures, great and small, the mosquito is the absolute worst. It is the most deadly species on the planet, killing over more »
August 2019 will mark the 50th anniversary of the mother of contemporary music festivals: Woodstock. Held over three days in 1969, the festival featured three-days of performances for folk and rock artists like Joan Baez, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix. The legacy of the festival was cemented by the Woodstock documentary and a song of the same name by folk luminary, Joni Mitchell. That’s a lot of talk about Woodstock when the festival wasn’t actually held there. Woodstock the event was actually held in Bethel, a neighboring town in upstate New York. Woodstock itself wasn’t even considered as a site for the festival. According to Woodstock the Oral History (1989) the only connection between the concert and the town is that the event’s promoters originally considered building a music studio in Woodstock, NY and incorporated under the name Woodstock Ventures. So what about the other Woodstock? Though it didn’t host the eponymous music festival, Woodstock, NY had been home to a thriving art colony since the early 1900s.
This blog post was written by G. Goldberg, student at Smith College and Summer 2019 intern in the Smithsonian Libraries Research Annex. Interning at the Smithsonian Libraries Research Annex (SLRA) more »