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An Isleta woman and her children sell goods alongside a train track, circa late 1880s to early 1900s. Photo courtesy of the Autry National Center

For most curators, designing an exhibit is an exercise in fully educating oneself about a topic of professional interest. For Stephanie Zuni, creating her recent show was an exercise in getting to know her family. Zuni is the scholar behind the recently opened exhibition “Time Exposures: Picturing a History of Isleta Pueblo in the 19th Century” currently on view at the Smithsonian’s American Indian Museum’s Heye Center in New York City.

When searching through archives for photographs for the show, Zuni came across pictures of her ancestors. A native of the Isleta Pueblo, in New Mexico, Zuni was attempting to select items that emphasized the transition that occurred in the community during the 1880s and 90s, when the tribe began losing land to the arriving railroad companies. “My grandfather was one of the leaders who went to Washington, DC when they were having the land dispute,” she says. “So in the photo, he was there, just camping out.”

Later, coming across another photo of a woman selling pottery at the pueblo train station, she knew something looked familiar. “I didn’t get to know my grandmother, but knowing that she was a potter, I could recognize that pottery in front of the train because we have that pot at home, with the same design,” she says. “Her face wasn’t showing, but I knew that had to be her.”

The new exhibition doesn’t just includes Zuni’s ancestors, but those of many Natives that still live at Isleta Pueblo, in New Mexico. “Time Exposures,” a three-part show that focuses on the enormous changes forced on the Isleta lifestyle at the start of the 20th century with the arrival of the railroad, features photography, film clips and artifacts such as kilts and pottery. In designing the exhibition, Zuni and others actively involved the community in the process. “We had a call for photographs, and we wanted people to have a part in this,” she says. “It was really a huge project for us, and it was a first for the Pueblo.”

The show covers both before and after 1881, when life in the community changed dramatically. At that time, the U.S. government allowed railroad companies to take land in the center of the Pueblo. “It really changed the way of life: crossing the railroad, and having to have more precaution over animals and their land,” says Zuni. Over time, the railroad spurred systematic changes in Isleta society. “There’s the encroachment of the new settlers, and the growth of nearby Albuquerque, and the introduction of schools and the Anglo-American economic system,” she says.

During this era, photography at the Pueblo was generally taken by outsiders. “A lot of these photographs were staged, and some of them were inappropriate, just not correct,” Zuni says. Some photos, for example, show traditional stone-throwing games with the wrong amount of stones. Many of the photos were used to convey stereotypical images of Pueblo life to tourists and people living far from New Mexico. “It’s kind of interesting to acknowledge that the photographer wasn’t always right, but that they do depict a huge portion of who we are in their eyes. These are their photographs, but we’re now telling the story,” says Zuni.

“Time Exposures” also explains the traditional cycle of the Isleta year through photography and other artifacts. “The beginning of the year is what we call our Night Fire, in December and January,” Zuni says. “Each of those events are named, and we have it depicted in the photo, and we have an interactive where you can press the button and you’ll hear the song and language and time that it reflects in the season.”

Deciding what information and which artifacts to include in the show was, at times, a sensitive process. Zuni worked with a committee of traditional Isleta leaders to make decisions during the design. “We went through a scanning process of which photographs were appropriate for people to understand who we are, as a people, and how we want those people on the outside to see us,” she says. This sort of community participation, though unusual for curating exhibitions in the Smithsonian, made possible the thorough detail and background that add such depth to the photographs on display. “The cultural committee was very involved, because of their traditional knowledge with this material,” she says.

Zuni and others hope that the traveling exhibition, which will eventually go on exhibition in a location closer to Isleta Pueblo after it closes next year in New York, will be of value to younger members of the community. “Seeing it set up, it is something that we are happy about, and something that I know will be there for future generations, whether its to find their lineage, or their kinship,” she says. “And maybe even finding their own grandparents in the photographs, as I did.”

View photos from the exhibit.

“Time Exposures: Picturing a History of Isleta Pueblo in the 19th Century” will be on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in New York, the George Gustav Heye Center, through Sunday, Jan. 8, 2012.

The original penicillin mold discovered by Fleming is in the collections held at the American History Museum. Photo courtesy museum

On this day 83 years ago, one of the most unexpected medical breakthroughs in human history occurred: Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming woke up to discover a mold growing in one of his petri dishes. Looking closer, he realized that wherever the mold was growing, the staphylococci bacteria he was culturing had died. He spent the next decade growing the penicillium mold and trying to isolate the antibiotic it secreted. The substance—which he termed penicillin—would go on to become the world’s most important antibiotic, saving millions of lives starting in World War II.

The American History Museum is fortunate to be home to the original petri dish in which Fleming found the mold. To commemorate this remarkable discovery, The List this week is a compendium of artifacts held in the Smithsonian collections that represent some of the most significant medical breakthroughs in history.

1. Early X-ray Tube: In 1895, Wilhelm Roentgen, a German physicist, was experimenting with passing electrical currents through glass vacuum tubes when he noticed a strange green glow on a piece of cardboard that was lying on his workbench. He soon discovered that invisible, unknown “x” rays were passing out of the tubes, causing the phosphorescent barium he’d painted on the cardboard to glow. Within a few weeks, he’d used this newly discovered form of energy to take a picture of his wife’s hand bones, producing the first X-ray image in history.

2. Salk’s Polio Vaccine and Syringe: During the first half of the 20th century, polio was an unchecked disease that affected millions worldwide, with no known cure. Experimental trials with the live virus as a vaccine routinely infected children. In 1952, a young virologist at the University of Pittsburgh named Jonas Salk developed a vaccine using the killed virus; with few volunteers willing to be injected with it, his first human subjects included his wife, children and himself. Subsequent field trials showed his vaccine to be safe and effective, leading to the eradication of polio in the United States, a major milestone in battling infectious disease.

The Liotta-Cooley Artificial Heart. Photo courtesy American History Museum

3. First Artificial Human Heart: Serious research into a mechanism for replacing the human heart started as early as 1949, and in several experiments, animal hearts were successfully replaced with artificial ones for short periods of time. But it wasn’t until April 4, 1969, when Haskell Karp lay dying of heart failure at a hospital in Houston, that doctors were able to successfully implant a mechanical heart into a human. This pneumatic pump created by Domingo Liotta was implanted by surgeon Denton Cooley, allowing the patient to live for 64 hours until a human heart transplant was available. Sadly, Karp died after receiving the transplant of a real heart due to a pulmonary infection.

4. First Whole-Body CT Scanner: Robert S. Ledley, a biophysicist and dentist, was an early proponent of using computer technology in biomedical research, publishing articles on the topic as early as 1959. After using computers to analyze chromosomes and sequence proteins, he turned to body imaging. His 1973 ACTA scanner was the first machine to use CT (computer tomography) technology to scan the whole body at once, compiling individual x-ray images to create a composite picture of the body, including soft tissue and organs as well as bones.

5. Recombinant DNA Research: Today, genetic modification is involved in everything from manufacturing insulin to producing herbicide-resistant crops. Research by Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer between 1972 and 1974 showing that genes from one type of bacteria could be transferred to another paved the way for these future advances in manipulating the genome. Cohen’s handwritten notes on page 51 of this notebook, titled “Outline for Recombination Paper,” provide an early view into this groundbreaking discovery.

Performer Diosa Costello, honored at a donation ceremony last week. Photo courtesy American History Museum

Diosa Costello was the first Latina on Broadway. She was a pioneering night club performer. As a producer and club owner, she set trends in entertainment; as a film star and popular musician, she personified them. “I was the original J. Lo.,” Costello says. Last week, as part of an on-stage program and conversation with curators, she donated a set of 11 stage costumes from her storied career to the American History Museum.

The 94-year-0ld Costello grew up in Puerto Rico, performing for her father sick in bed and soldiers on the street . “I was born dancing,” she says. “All my life I danced.” After moving to New York with her family as a teenager, she worked her way up the ranks, catching a major break when she was cast in the Broadway musical Too Many Girls.

During her long and diverse career, she would record music, appear in Hollywood films, perform alongside Rodney Dangerfield in Catskills comedy clubs and launch Desi Arnaz to fame. In an era when racial diversity was nonexistent on stage, she performed as everything from Latina stereotypes to a Pacific islander, as “Bloody Mary” in South Pacific.

Her routines, in particular, were remarkably racy for the time. “I would stick my behind out, and I put a glass of water on top of it. When I was dancing all over the place, and I didn’t spill one drop,” Costello says. “I’m very uninhibited. If I think something, I do it.”

“She is a pioneering performer and a significant figure in American entertainment,” says Dwight Blocker Bowers, a curator of the American History Museum’s entertainment collection. He hopes that, after renovations that will create a larger exhibition space for the popular culture artifacts, the museum will be able to put Costello’s costumes on display.

Despite her longevity and popularity, Costello never expected for her work to be honored in the Smithsonian. “I’ll tell you, I didn’t even know. I had never been to a museum, I didn’t even know what the heck it was all about,” she says. But Bowers feels the honor is fitting for a career of Costello’s magnitude. “You’re a legend,” he says, “to us and to the American people.”

In the upcoming November issue of Smithsonian, don’t miss Around the Mall’s Q&A with Diosa Costello.

Empress Dowager Cixi strikes a pose. Photo courtesy of the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery.

Empress Dowager Cixi is known historically as one of the most powerful women in the world. When China’s Emperor Xianfeng died in 1861, Cixi’s son Tongzhi—Xianfeng’s only male heir—became emperor, and she rose from the low status of concubine to a regent. Though born to a low-ranking officer in 1835, she would eventually serve as regent for her nephew Guangxu, as well, and ultimately reigned as sovereign to more than 400 million people for more than 45 years.

During the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, Cixi (pronounced TSUH-see) sided with the Chinese insurgents, who killed Chinese Christians and foreign diplomats. And, for it, her international reputation was tarnished.

In 1903, the Empress Dowager gave a photographer, named Xunling, a challenging assignment: to improve her image. The result is a curious series of portraits—the only surviving of the empress. The Palace Museum in Beijing holds most of the photographs. But the Smithsonian is fortunate enough to have a cache of 36 of Xunling’s glass-plate negatives in its collections. The Freer and Sackler Galleries purchased the negatives following the 1944 death of Deling, Xunling’s sister and a former personal attendant to Cixi. For the first time, 19 of the portraits are on display at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in the exhibition, “Power | Play: China’s Empress Dowager,” through January 29.

The exhibition organizes the portraits, thematically, in the galleries. There are photographs of the Empress Dowager taken in a temporary studio in the courtyard of her private residence within the Summer Palace, as well as photographs of diplomatic receptions and portraits she gave as diplomatic gifts. (One, a large hand-tinted portrait, is on display. It was sent to Theodore Roosevelt in 1904. His daughter Alice received a print in 1905.) There is a section devoted to more private portraits of Cixi and her attendants. And, another gallery highlights photographs of dramatically staged theatrical scenes with the empress, her attendants and her eunuchs.

At a recent preview of the exhibition, David Hogge, head of the archives at the Freer and Sackler galleries and curator of the show, shared stories about the photographs that he came across in his research. Hogge pointed out the Western influences in a series of portraits of Cixi in her courtyard. In one, for instance, there are pyramids of apples—fruit enjoyed more in the Western world than in China—and a French Louis XIV pedestal table—”subtle markers that mark her as a cosmopolitan ruler,” he says. Cixi appears to be taking a cue from Western portraiture and is seated in a more relaxed pose in another. The empress dowager “may have been behind the curve when it came to political reform, but she was ahead of it when it came to using the medium [of photography] to control her image,” Sean Callahan, professor of photography at Syracuse University, told Smithsonian magazine writer Owen Edwards, for a story he recently wrote on the photographs.

Hogge was perplexed by another pose she takes in two of the 19 photos exhibited. She holds a flower to her hair and a mirror in her other hand. But, with some help from outside experts, he figured out that the pose mimics the heroine in a scene in a Ming dynasty play called The Peony Pavilion. To those who knew the play, it would reference longevity, presumably for both the empress and the Qing dynasty.

In an interesting extension, visitors to the exhibition can watch a compilation of footage from films about the empress in a final room. The cinematic depictions of Cixi are largely informed by Xunling’s photographs. She is a rather wicked character in 55 Days in Peking from 1963, and yet in The Last Emperor (1987) and Shadow Magic (2000), she is portrayed as being more humane. In a way, the gradual softening of Cixi on screen begs the question: Was her public relations campaign a success in the end, nearly a hundred years later?

In an upcoming film series, the Freer and Sackler will be showing the following films in full at the Freer Gallery of Art’s Meyer Auditorium:

The Empress Dowager – Friday, September 30, 7 p.m.

The Last Tempest – Sunday, October 2, 2 p.m.

55 Days in Peking – Friday, October 7, 7 p.m.

Shadow Magic – Sunday, October 9, 2 p.m.

The Last Emperor – Friday, October 14, 7 p.m.

An early pair of Levi Strauss & Co.'s "Duck Trousers." Photo courtesy American History Museum

On the 109th anniversary of Levi Strauss’ death, his chief product—blue jeans—have become a $91 billion per year industry, an icon of American culture, and quite possibly the world’s most popular article of clothing. His name, more than any other, evokes the tough denim fabric and heavy stitching of America’s favorite pair of pants. But the birth of blue jeans came under surprising circumstances—and the ancestral trousers barely resemble the blue jeans of today.

It all started in 1871, when tailor Jacob Davis of Reno, Nevada, had a problem. The pants he was making for miners weren’t tough enough to stand up to the conditions in local mines; among other issues, the pockets and button fly were constantly being torn. “A miner’s wife came up to Davis and asked him to come up with pants that could withstand some abuse,” says curator Nancy Davis (no relation), from the American History Museum. Davis looked at the metal fasteners he used on harnesses and other objects. “At that time, he came up with the riveted trousers.”

As local miners snapped up the overalls he made with rivet-strengthened stress points and durable “duck cloth,” a type of canvas, Davis realized he needed to protect his idea. “He had to rush, due to the fact that these worked really well,” says Nancy Davis. “He realized he had something.” Lacking the money to file documents, he turned to Levi Strauss, a German immigrant who had recently opened a branch of his family’s dry-goods store in San Francisco, and the two took out a patent on a pair of pants strengthened with rivets.

Davis soon moved to San Francisco, and wide scale production of riveted pants started for the first time. Strauss ran the business, while Davis became production manager. “[Davis] actually was the person in charge of making sure that the trousers really did what they said they were going to do,” says Nancy Davis. “He was the person who knew how these pants should work.”

A close-up of the Smithsonian's original Levi Strauss trousers. Photo courtesy American History Museum

Business for the company boomed as pants flew off the shelves. “Strauss was doing pretty well in terms of bringing in merchandise from the East, but this was great because he didn’t need to bring in everything. He could manufacture it there, and that cut out a lot of cost,” says Davis. “He didn’t make just the jeans, but this was the principal thing he was making, and they were very popular.”

Essential to the Levi’s name was the integrity and ruggedness of the trousers. As seen on the American History Museum’s own pair of antique duck trousers, made sometime between 1873 and 1896, the label clearly proclaims “Patent Riveted Duck & Denim Clothing. . .Every Pair Guaranteed. None Genuine Unless Bearing This Label.”

Even as the patent expired in 1890, Levi Strauss & Co. was already associated with a tremendously popular product and set up for long-term success. But introducing a new, more flexible fabric—blue denim—to go with the rivet idea proved to be the combination that would shape American wardrobes for more than a century and counting. “The brown duck continued to be used as late as 1896, and for a while it was side by side with the blue jeans,” Davis says.

The 1890 creation of the iconic Levi’s 501 style, in particular, led to the denim jeans taking over, eventually moving outside of the working class demographic and into the embrace of everyday casual fashion. “Initially, with Davis, it was the people who really needed serviceable pants, and needed them to last a lot longer than most,” says Nancy Davis. “Then we have record of—as early as the 1930s—people, other than blue-collar workers, wearing jeans. You do have people wearing them who don’t need to wear them, especially young people.”

In the latter half of the 20th century—decades after Strauss’ death in 1902—blue jeans achieved widespread cultural significance. “They really come to their apex in the 60s and 70s,” Davis says. “The interesting thing is that this particular type of pants, the blue jeans, have become international,” she adds. “It’s what people think of. When they think of America, they think of blue jeans.”