Prospect and Refuge in Travel

[mindblowingscience]

theatlantic.com

Elementary School Ditches Andrew Jackson for Mary Jackson, the First Black Female NASA Engineer

The school district in Utah voted unanimously for the change.

Marina Koren

An elementary school in Utah has traded one Jackson for another in a change that many say was a long time coming.

Jackson Elementary School in Salt Lake City will no longer be named for Andrew Jackson, the seventh U.S. president, whose slave ownership and treatment of Native Americans are often cited in the debate over memorializing historical figures associated with racism.

Instead, the school will honor Mary Jackson, the first black female engineer at nasa whose story, and the stories of others like her at the space agency, was chronicled in Hidden Figures, a 2016 film based on a book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly.

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[littletimechange]

The Kitchen Table Series, 1990
Carrie Mae Weems

[smithsonian]

Not only does it stink, but part of this orchid resembles wriggling maggots. A great gift! 

This specimen of Bulbophyllum phalaenopsis, charmingly nicknamed “Bucky,” once nearly shut down a @smithsoniangardens greenhouse for DAYS because of its stench. 

When it was first donated to us, few people outside Asia had seen the species, though it is recorded in early writings as smelling like “a thousand dead elephants rotting in the sun.” 

Bucky’s species (originally from Papua New Guinea) targets female carrion flies as pollinators, with a flower head that has a cluster of 15 to 20 meat-colored flowers covered with fleshy projections. If that weren’t enough, it evolved to have a fragrance that matches its appearance.

[smithsonianmag]

Photo of the Day: Salt Field Workers

Photographer caption: These are women who work in a salt field in Vietnam. I altered the image to black and white and made the background black to emphasize the women.

Photo by Matty Karp (Haifa, Israel); Vietnam

Our 15th Annual Photo Contest finalists will be announced in March. Enjoy our archive of more than 435,000 photos in the meantime!

[smithsonianmag]

Photo of the Day: Konduki 

Photographer caption: Aerial photo. The middle of Russia, Tula region, near Konduki village. Among plains, cornfields and copses lies the abandoned Ushakovsky coal cut. During the Soviet era lignite was mined there, but in the 90s mining was closed due to unprofitability. Now 50-meter-high clay hills are overgrown with birches and aspens, forming a landscape very unusual for this region.

Photo by Alexey Kharitonov (Moscow, Russia); Konduki, Tula region, Russia 

Our 15th Annual Photo Contest finalists will be announced in the spring. Enjoy our archive of more than 435,000 photos in the meantime!

[smithsonianmag]

Photo: Gwich'in Sisters

Photographer caption: Sisters, Cora and Lillian, participated in a traditional dance performance during the 2016 Gwich'in Gathering in Arctic Village, Alaska.

Photo by Allison Minto (Kew Gardens, New York, USA): Arctic Village, Alaska, USA

Our 15th Annual Photo Contest finalists will be announced in the spring. Enjoy our archive of more than 435,000 photos in the meantime!

[hirshhorn]

“Carving is interrelated masses conveying an emotion; a perfect relationship between the mind and the color, light and weight which is the stone, made by the hand which feels.”

Happy Birthday to sculptor Barbara Hepworth, born on this day in 1903!

Hepworth took inspiration from organic forms and her compositions mimic the rhythm and flow of water-smoothed rocks, caves, and ancient hills. “Figure for Landscape” (1960) is on view in our sculpture garden, have you seen it at different times of day? Sunlight creates varied effects, and the openings allow for the surrounding landscape to become part of the artwork.  

[hirshhorn]

[smithsonian]

Each of these orchids is a work of art.

There are more than 100 stunning blooms featured at the 2017 Orchid Exhibition by Smithsonian Gardens and the United States Botanic Garden. This is the first time the annual show is at our @hirshhorn museum, where orchids act as colorful, time-based installations that constantly change over the course of the exhibition.

You can see “orchids: A MOMENT” through May 14.

[hirshhorn]

insider.si.edu

An Ephemeral Ebb and Flow

Stretching the entire circumference of the inner-circle galleries on the second level of the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is Linn Meyers’ largest work, …

Don’t miss “Our View From Here” by Linn Meyers, on view through August 13!