Two exhibitions, one at the National Museum of American History and the other at Monticello, explore Thomas Jefferson’s relationship with slavery.

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Exhibition Review: Smithsonian and Monticello Exhibitions on Jefferson’s Slaves

A multimedia archive of life in the UK in the 1980s and the modern day is put on display at the National Museum of Computing.

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Reinvented Domesday exhibit opens

When the Smithsonian staff was preparing an exhibition about the 30th anniversary of the HIV-AIDS epidemic last summer, there were soul-searching discussions. The exhibition at the National Museum of American History explains the scientific aspects and social consequences of the AIDS fight and contains condoms, blood testers, explicit material on healthy sex and some posters with explicit language. Read full article > >

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‘Hide/Seek’: Smithsonian officials look back at what went wrong

On a bright and breezy day, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and former foreign correspondent Geraldine Brooks wades into the garden outside the National Museum of the American Indian, investigating the buttercups and medicinal herbs. “Oh, that seed would have been an important food source,” the Australian-born Brooks says, inspecting the grassy meadow. “Everything planted at this museum is important in Native American traditions.” In her latest book,“ Caleb’s Crossing ,” Brooks unearths telling details of daily Native American life to build the world of Caleb Cheeshahteaumauk, who in 1665 was the first Native American to graduate from Harvard University. Read full article > >

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Conversation: Geraldine Brooks’s research fuels her writing

With an update to its internal search function, Twitter claims to have made it easier to find new people to follow based on your interests. Instead of visiting Twitter’s ‘Who to Follow’ page and wading through various suggestions grouped by theme (‘Art & Design,’ ‘Food & Drink,’ ‘Voices in Egypt,’ etc.), you can now use the site’s search fields. Either use the search field found at the top of the page to look up a particular subject and navigate to the ‘People’ section or visit the ‘Who to Follow’ page and search from a separate field found there. “This new approach helps you find the Twitter users that will best help you follow your interests,” according to the official Twitter blog . “For example, if you’re interested in hip hop, chances are that you’d like to follow hip hop artists. Searching for ‘hip hop’ now surfaces accounts like @common and @questlove. (Previously, we typically showed accounts that have ‘hip hop’ in the name.)” I have robots on the mind thanks to a presentation at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History this morning. Previously, querying Twitter with ‘robots’ would have only returned a list of users with that word in their handle: @Robot_Magazine, @RobotGrrl, @robots_dreams. Now, Twitter promises, a similar search will return a list of users who are interested in robots as a topic. When I searched ‘robots’ just now, the results included @MissySB, the self-described head honchette at Suicidebots.com; and @heatherknight, a roboticist affiliated with Carnegie Mellon University. Twitter won’t reveal the new algorithm it’s using to pull together these searches, but it seems to be a step in the right direction.

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New Twitter Search Is Meant to Make Finding Friends Easier

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History has a large collection of automobiles — 73 — in its collection. But with the mission of collecting and preserving the entire heritage of the United States inside of one building on the National Mall, the museum’s curators don’t have the room required to display all of these machines. A new project allows you to vote for the two items you want to see rolled out of storage and showcased. Even if you don’t vote or live near the museum, this unique week-long series of eight iconic artifacts will provide you with a quick history of the American automobile. This post was originally published on the National Museum of American History’s  “O Say Can You See?” blog . It is republished here with permission. It was written by Roger White, the museum’s associate curator in the division of work and industry. See more posts about the Smithsonian .   Race to the Museum: Glasspar Sports Car, 1953 Curves, fun, and low cost — that was the appeal of a Glasspar sports car. Bill Tritt, a California boat builder, began producing American versions of European sports cars as an extension of his fiberglass boatbuilding business. Fiberglass-reinforced plastic (FRP) craft methods made it relatively easy for Tritt to enter the new car market, avoiding a huge investment in dies and presses. The result was spectacular: a sculpted, Jaguar-like creation that appealed to car enthusiasts because of its sporty looks and affordability. Tritt’s innovation introduced the concept of the personal car and proved that fiberglass — tough, rustproof, and easy to repair — made good car bodies. Tritt advised General Motors on the 1953 Corvette fiberglass-body sports car, an even bigger commercial success. Today a dedicated corps of enthusiasts document the histories and whereabouts of hundreds of Glasspar sports cars built in the early 1950s. One enthusiast, Dale Dutton, generously donated his Glasspar to the National Museum of American History in 1996. I attended a memorable luncheon with Dale and Bill in the museum soon after the car went on display. It’s a rare experience to meet the person who originated any vehicle, especially one that started a revolution. Roger White is Associate Curator in the Division of Work and Industry at the National Museum of American History. More Race to the Museum posts : Race to the Museum: Tucker Sedan, 1948 Race to the Museum: Miller Race Car, 1929 Race to the Museum: Oldsmobile Curved-Dash Runabout, 1903 Race to the Museum: Balzer Automobile, 1894 Race to the Museum: Long Steam Tricycle, About 1880 Race to the Museum: Voting Opens Dec. 21

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Race to the Museum: Glasspar Sports Car, 1953

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History has a large collection of automobiles — 73 — in its collection. But with the mission of collecting and preserving the entire heritage of the United States inside of one building on the National Mall, the museum’s curators don’t have the room required to display all of these machines. A new project allows you to vote for the two items you want to see rolled out of storage and showcased. Even if you don’t vote or live near the museum, this unique week-long series of eight iconic artifacts will provide you with a quick history of the American automobile. This post was originally published on the National Museum of American History’s  “O Say Can You See?” blog . It is republished here with permission. It was written by Roger White, the museum’s associate curator in the division of work and industry. See more posts about the Smithsonian . Race to the Museum: Balzer Automobile, 1884 Stephen Balzer traveled in the best circles, both socially and mechanically. Trained as a watch maker at Tiffany & Co., he became a machinist and inventor. He won a gold medal for a register that counted revolutions of mechanisms with a shaft and numbered, toothed wheels – a forerunner of the odometer. In 1894, Balzer built a vehicle with a gasoline engine that rotated around a crankshaft. He drove the whirring quadricycle into the history books as the first American-made automobile in New York City. In 1898, Smithsonian Secretary Samuel Langley hired Balzer to build a gasoline engine for the Aerodrome A, an experimental powered airplane. The following year, Balzer donated his experimental vehicle to the Smithsonian, where it earned another distinction as the first motor vehicle in the collection. Balzer’s rotary airplane engine wasn’t star-crossed, however; it was underpowered and had to be modified by Langley’s assistant, Charles Manly. Despite the improvements, the Aerodrome A flew like a brick, and honors for the first powered flight went to the Wright brothers. Balzer built at least one other experimental automobile and briefly tried to manufacture cars. His 1894 vehicle remains a testimony to his skill — and proof that you can go places simply by going around in circles. Roger White is Associate Curator in the Division of Work and Industry at the National Museum of American History. More Race to the Museum posts : Race to the Museum: Long Steam Tricycle, About 1880 Race to the Museum: Voting Opens Dec. 21

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Race to the Museum: Balzer Automobile, 1894

Declared by Presidential Proclomation as Wright Brother Day, December 17th commemorates the first powered human flight by Orville and Wilbur Wright at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903. The Wright Flyer was made of spruce, hand-carved propellers, and an engine block cast in lightweight aluminum, utilizing an early version of a modern fuel injector. The Wrights finally made two flights into a freezing headwind gusting: Orville made the first flight of 120 feet in 12 seconds, at a speed of 6.8 miles per hour. Today, air travel is a ubiquitous practice, an essentially banal feature of modern life more frequently subject to irritation and kvetching rather than marvel and wonderment. But in the decades following that single moment in the cold of Kitty Hawk, air travel was a epochal moment of human innovation. “In fifteen years, air travel has superimposed itself upon civilization,” wrote Kenneth Chafee McIntosh in The Atlantic in September 1921. “Its future is limitless.” Aviation has attained in fifteen years a degree of progress which can hardly be matched by any other epoch-making invention in centuries. One hundred and eighteen years since the Clermont, one hundred and fifty since Franklin’s kite, and aviation is already as advanced, relatively, as steam and electricity. John Hawkins and Francis Drake revolutionized naval warfare by fighting broadside instead of head-on, and once for all made the gun the master of surface ships; and the all-big-gun battleship, throwing a heavy broadside, is the legitimate child of Drake’s weatherly little Pelican. Three hundred and sixty years were required to produce the modern battleship after Drake had shown the way; and there is yet no more difference visible than already distinguishes the army’s new Verville-Packard from the original Wright airplane hanging in the National Museum at Washington. Orville Wright’s forty-mile speed has become three miles a minute, and the end is not yet. His one-thousand-feet altitude has become seven miles, and there halts momentarily while we safeguard the gasoline and oil system against the bitter cold of the black upper air. His twenty-two minute, eighteen-mile endurance has become a screaming leap from continent to continent, and air-planes now cross half a world with little comment. But McIntosh recognized that all technologies put to use for human betterment could also be used for human malevolence. The prospects for warfare were just as glaring as those for commercial activity: Eight years of devoted, perilous, quiet work; seven years of feverish development–that is the history of aviation; and it is to-day probably the most far-reaching existing influence on future history. Gone forever are the sickly, thirsting expeditionary columns, which in the past have punished raiding savages in the jungles and deserts of the world at hideous cost. A few men, a few air-planes, a few days, and the chastisement is complete. Gone is the immunity of colliers and repair-ships lagging in the wake of the sea-borne fleets; arid gone is the safety of the island cities. “The future of all the world is in the air — a future either glorious or terrible,” wrote McIntosh to The Atlantic ‘s readers. “Your generation and mine will decide which it shall be.” Read the rest of McIntosh’s ” Sudden Greatness .” Revisit more pieces from The Atlantic ‘s archives with the Technology Channel . Image: First successful flight of the Wright Flyer, by the Wright brothers, Wikimedia Commons .

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Sudden Greatness

A stupid vandal or a scary criminal? Shots were fired at the National Museum of the Marine Corps on Thursday night-the fourth time in recent weeks that shots have been fired at a building in the area. The museum was shot at on October 17; then, two…

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Shots Fired at Marine Corps Museum

Several shots have been fired at the National Museum of the Marine Corps building in Virginia, the FBI said Friday.

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Marines’ museum fired on

The British Museum settles a dispute with Iran’s national museum over the loan of ancient Persian treasure the Cyrus Cylinder.

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Cyrus Cylinder is loaned to Iran