Smithsonian.com

Detail of Robert Rauschenberg's Rabbit Chow (1977). Image courtesy of the American Art Museum.

When you walk into any given Smithsonian museum, you are at the total mercy of the curators, who, due to space constraints, can only present a teensy smattering of all the cool stuff available at their disposal at any given time. And believe me, there’s nothing more disappointing than going to a museum only to find that the one object that you absolutely HAD to see is no longer on view. For those of you unable to make it out to DC—and those who want to dive deeper into the Smithsonian’s riches—there is a handy new tool that allows you to search for things across the entire Smithsonian Institution archives (or at least, the chunks of it that have been digitized). From popular topics—like dinosaurs and airplanes—to more esoteric ones—like rabbit chow—there’s something for everybody. So come cruise the Smithsonian’s eclectic collections online at the Collections Search Center.