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I started watching The X-Files circa 1997. I was in middle school, finally old enough to stay up until ten on a school night, and oh buddy, did I get hooked. The bizarre tales of paranormal activity instantly made for fascinating viewing, but the show’s tone—which ranged from the frightening to the comic—and the fundamental conflicts between the central figures—Fox Mulder, the believer, pitted against Dana Scully, the skeptic—endowed the show with a tremendous amount of character, a quality sorely missed in today’s age of reality TV. Being without cable (there’s something about paying for airwaves that never made sense to me) I haven’t seen the show since it’s finale in 2002. Nevertheless, my “innie” geek went “outie” as I was able to attend the ceremony commemorating the donation of X-Files memorabilia to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. I was able to take an up-close gawk at Mulder and Scully’s FBI ID badges—you know, the ones they flipped out in, like, every episode with those “yeah, we know we’re badass” expressions on their faces— alongside a coffee-stained script, storyboards, maquettes and the iconic “I Want to Believe” poster. But, hands down, the icing on the cake was my brief interview with series creator Chris Carter. Unfortunately the donated items will not be on view until the museum’s renovation is completed, but in the meantime, X-Philes can get their Mulder and Scully fix with the new X-Files movie, due out July 25. What are your feelings about a second big screen adaptation of one of the most popular television series of all time? Sound off in the comments section below!

Cameras don’t lie. As for the people behind them, that’s another issue entirely. This blending of fact and fiction inherent in moving-image media — everything from what you see on the nightly news to Hollywood — is explored in the Hirshhorn’s video art exhibition, “The Cinema Effect: Realisms.” While you can tour most of the exhibition any day of the week, two noteworthy works only receive bi-weekly screenings: “The Battle of Orgreave” and “Repetition.”

“The Battle of Orgreave” tells the story of a 1984 miners’ strike and a violent confrontation that took place between picketing laborers and police. More than 50 miners and as many as 72 police officers were injured (many of the miners are believed to have not reported their injuries for fear of arrest). The film is unusual in that it reenacts events that are still in living memory, which made me immediately wonder, “Video crews already filmed this. What’s the point?” The point: in 1984, the BBC’s misrepresentation of events helped sway public opinion against the miners. (The BBC issued an apology in 1991). The film “Battle of Orgreave” tries to set the record straight. Through reenactment and interviews, the miners finally have an opportunity to tell their side of the story. The men who went head to head years ago are brought back to participate in the film. There is, however, creative casting afoot: some miners play policemen. If nothing else, the film — from the art of creating to the act of viewing — is all about gaining new perspectives.

“Repetition” recreates the 1971 Stanford prison experiment, in which a number of college students — some designated as guards, others as prisoners — were pitted against each other in a prison simulation. The passage of time has done nothing to improve the ethics or scientific methodology of this insane exercise. In the film, volunteers are paid $40 a day to play guards and prisoners, and they can quit the experiment at any time. Guards have a list of rules they are expected to enforce and prisoners are expected to obey. The people running the experiment sit back and wait to see how long it takes before the guards start abusing their power and the prisoners start rebelling. Isn’t that sadistic? The volunteers readily fall into their roles, and we’re never sure if they act from preconceived notions of guard/prisoner behavior or if what we see really reflects some dark element of human nature. Maybe that’s why this venture is best passed off as art than science fair fodder. Still, it’s shocking to see what people are willing to do for money.

When do you begin to question the truth or ethics of what you see? Are there works of art that raise those questions for you? Tell us in the comments area below. Personally, I’m a huge fan of “Grey Gardens.” Some see it as a piece of exploitative tabloid-style filmmaking. I find it to be a poignant piece of portraiture. Does the truth lie somewhere in between?

These films are free to the public and seating is first come, first served. Screenings are held on Tuesday and Thursday and begin at noon. A note to parents: unless you are OK with f-bombs bombarding your children’s ears and are willing to explain why that nice man is urinating in the soup, AVOID THESE FILMS!

(Still from Jeremy Deller’s, “The Battle of Orgreave,” 2001. Image courtesy of the artist and Artange, London. Photo by Martin Jenkinson.)

“A lot of people don’t know that women used to play professional baseball,” said Mamie “Peanut” Johnson, looking appalled.

If you didn’t know this either, prepared to be schooled.

Mamie is one of three women who played in the Negro Leagues, all-black baseball teams where giants like Hank Aaron, Jackie Robinson and Satchel Paige got their start in the years when baseball, like almost everything else in America, was segregated. The Leagues drew thousands of fans, had their own World Series and All-Star Game, and for many years were one of the nation’s biggest black-owned and –operated businesses.

Mamie, who was invited by the Anacostia Community Museum yesterday to speak as part of an exhibit about the Negro Leagues, said her path to the pitcher’s mound was far from smooth.

She started playing ball as a kid. When times were hard, she made her own baseballs out of twine, masking tape and rocks. In 1953 she signed with the Indianapolis Clowns (who, through some strange trick of geography, were actually based in New York). For the next two years, she was the only female pitcher amid a sea of male sluggers.

“Some guy told me I couldn’t strike him out because I was no bigger than a peanut,” said Mamie. The way she tells it, she nodded at the guy. And then she struck him out. That’s when she got the nickname “Peanut.”

Robert Hall, Assistant Director for Education at the Anacostia Community Museum, said it was important for museum-goers to hear from one of the few women who played the game.“If you looked around, you saw there were a lot of girls,” he said, referring to the audience at the lecture. “She’s told the girls a part of their history they didn’t know about.”

Did you know women once played pro baseball? Could that ever happen again? Tell us what you think in the comments area below.

The crystal skull sought by Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones in this year’s recent sequel has sparked a flurry of interest in the Smithsonian’s very own crystal skull—which is perhaps becoming one of the world’s best-known fakes thanks to the dogged research efforts of anthropologist Jane MacLaren Walsh of the Natural History Museum. Check out the magazine’s July story on Walsh’s work. Today, the skull makes it public debut, going on view at Natural History in the ground floor corridor next to the Atruim Cafe. And don’t miss the debut of the Smithsonian Channel’s “Legend of the Crystal Skulls”. tonight at 9:00 p.m. (Photograph courtesy of James Di Loreto, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution)

A new exhibition opened at the Smithsonian American Art Museum this past weekend. “Local Color: Washington Painting at Midcentury,” blazes with 27 huge color-is-expressive canvases, all works by Washington, D.C.-based artists, Leon Berkowitz, Gene Davis, Thomas Downing, Sam Gilliam, Fel Hines, Jacob Kainen, Howard Mehring, Paul Reed and Alma Thomas.

Color painters are having a moment of rediscovery this year in shows around the Smithsonian campus, including the Hirshhorn’s recent Morris Louis retrospective and SAAM’s earlier exhibit, “Color as Field.”

But speaking of local color, artist and stripe-meister Gene Davis (1920-1985) was a bit of a character. DC native all the way, born and raised, a graduate of University of Maryland, he began his career as a journalist and after a stint at some out-of-town newspapers settled in as a sports writer for the Washington Daily News. “I was born here,” he said, “and wild horses could not drag me away.”

That was all before he began painting his stripes. Davis painted miles and miles of stripes. He painted a parking lot in Philadelphia with 31,464 square feet, all in stripes. But don’t think him a one-hit wonder, for in smart art circles, Davis’s stripes are quite significant. Trust us on this.

But consider this, according to one critic: “No painter in this city ever had more fun.”

Davis, who frequently played poker with Harry S Truman, once collected a jar of “dirty air” from the sidewalk in front of the White House—and then removed it to the country. He produced, in 1971, a work of art that reads more like a New Yorker cartoon, “The Artist’s Fingerprints, Except for One, Which Belongs to Someone Else.” He even gave away 50 of his paintings to random members of the public. And he may have lent credence to one of the modern art world’s harshest condemnations when he exhibited his works of art alongside that of an 8-year-old.

As Washington Post critic Paul Richard explains in his Davis’ obituary: “When asked by irritated fans why he deigned to do such things, Davis like to quote from memory a line from Emerson, who’d said that on the lintel of his doorway he would inscribe the one word. . .

“Whim.”

(Gene Davis, Black Grey Beat, 1964, acrylic, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift from the Vincent Melzac Collection)