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"Superfudge" author Judy Blume. Photo by Sigrid Estrada

One of America’s most beloved authors, Judy Blume, will receive the John P. McGovern Award from the Smithsonian Associates in recognition of her contributions to the American family.

“Blume is a longtime champion of children’s education and advocate of intellectual freedom,” says Barbara Tuceling of the Smithsonian Associates. “She’s given a voice to young people coming of age that they may not have otherwise had, and she’s done so with honesty and great care for her young readers.”

Blume is best-known for her work in children’s and young adult fiction, with books such as Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret, Blubber, Forever and Tiger Eyes. With identifiable characters that readers could relate to, she has unflinchingly and realistically dealt with coming-of-age issues like menstruation, bullying and teen sex. Her books have sold more than 80 million copies worldwide and have been translated into 31 languages. Now 73 years old, Judy Blume is currently at work on a young adult novel set in the 1950s. “I like the 12-and-under set,” she wrote in a recent email to me. “and also the adult voice. Yet here I am writing a long, complicated novel from various viewpoints, all of them teenagers in the ’50s.”

Following the presentation, Blume will reflect on her career and discuss today’s children and the challenges of the American family, as seen through the lens of her work, with NPR arts correspondent Lynn Neary. Be sure to check out my interview with Blume in the upcoming January 2012 issue.

Judy Blume and the Right to Read: Monday, November 28, from 7-9 p.m. at the Ripley Center. Tickets for members is $18, non-members $23.

Beth Lipman's sculpture "Bancketje," is on view at the Renwick. Photo courtesy American Art Museum

With Thanksgiving Day at hand, the ATM team combed the collections for the some of the best feasts depicted in art. Visit the American Art Museum and its branch, the Renwick Gallery, to see these and other masterpieces of holiday food festivities.

1. Sioux Dog Feast: George Catlin was a self-taught artist who traveled the American West during the 1830s. This painting portrays a feast given by the Lakota people to visiting U.S. government representatives, likely observed at Fort Pierre in 1832. Recounting the event in his Letters and Notes Catlin wrote, “Near the foot of the flag-staff were placed in a row on the ground, six or eight kettles, with iron covers on them, shutting them tight, in which were prepared the viands for our voluptuous feast.”

2. Vegetable Dinner: This 1927 work, painted by artist Peter Blume at the precocious age of 21, depicts a pair of women—one, seated and smoking, the other, standing and chopping vegetables. “Blume was involved with a style called Purism, which emphasized exquisite contours and simplified shapes,” writes museum director Elizabeth Broun. “Still, there’s something in the way the knife slicing away a potato skin is poised against the vulnerable thumb, perhaps to cut more deeply. Blume could find a dark tension in this game of edges and surfaces.”

Doris Lee's 1935 "Thanksgiving," is held in the collections. Photo courtesy American Art Museum.

3. Thanksgiving: During her lifetime, Doris Lee was a popular mainstream artist whose work evoked Norman Rockwell and appeared in Life magazine. This 1935 painting provided a look back at the simpler domestic life many yearned for during the years of the Great Depression. The bustling kitchen is full of preparation for the annual feast, and although the work appears simple in terms of subject, it is filled with countless realistic details.

4. Archelous and Hercules: In ancient Greek myth, the god Archelous took the form of a bull during flood season and carved channels into the earth, while Hercules tore off his horn to create a cornucopia of plenty. Thomas Hart Benton’s 1947 oil painting adapts this legend as a parable for the American Midwest, where engineers worked to tame the Missouri River. The plentiful harvest spilling from the horn represents the future bumper crops farmers would enjoy as a result of this work.

5. Bancketje: This sculpture—named after the banquets often featured in 17th century Dutch still-life paintings—is a literal feast, but one already eaten. Contemporary glass artist Beth Lipman worked with 15 other artisans to create the extravagant installation, piling 400 pieces of hand-blown glass tableware, stemware, candlesticks and serving dishes atop an oak table. The 2003 piece manages to combine an initial impression of abundance with a subsequent awareness of emptiness and decay.

Come see BK Adam's "Exercise Your Mynd" exhibition and make your own walking figures. Photo courtesy Anacostia Community Museum.

Friday, November 25 Zoo Lights

Zoo Lights is the National Zoo’s annual holiday show of light displays, special animal exhibits and entertainment. Starting this Friday, come to the Zoo during the evening and enjoy an LED light show illuminating the trees, walkways and buildings, life-size animal light silhouettes and the Zoo’s new “iceless” skating rink featuring a high-tech acrylic material. The area’s only free holiday light show runs from 5 to 9 p.m. on Friday through Sunday nights, November 25 to December 11 and December 16 to January 1. National Zoo.

Saturday, November 26 Make Them Walk

Join local artist BK Adams for a creative and hands-on journey through his exhibition “Exercise Your Mynd.” After a personal tour of the show, Adams will work with attendees in helping them make their own 3-dimensional walking figures. Free, with reservations required at 202.633.4844. 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Anacostia Community Museum.

Sunday, November 27 What’s in the Castle?

Come for a guided tour of the Smithsonian Institution’s iconic Castle. Learn about founder James Smithson, as well as the architecture of the building. The docent-guided tour will cover all public areas of the building, including Smithson’s crypt, the Great Hall and the West Wing. Free. Tours are conducted Sundays at 10:30 a.m., Mondays and Fridays at 9:30 a.m., and at both times on Saturdays. Smithsonian Castle, meet at information desk.

For a complete listing of Smithsonian events and exhibitions visit the goSmithsonian Visitors Guide. Additional reporting by Michelle Strange.

Courtesy of the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.

Plymouth Rock, located on the shore of Plymouth Harbor in Massachusetts, is reputed to be the very spot where William Bradford, an early governor of Plymouth colony, and other Pilgrims first set foot on land  in 1620. Yet, there is no mention of the granite stone in the two surviving firsthand accounts of the founding of the colony—Bradford’s famous manuscript Of Plymouth Plantation and Edward Winslow’s writings published in a document called “Mourt’s Relation.”

In fact, the rock went unidentified for 121 years. It wasn’t until 1741, when a wharf was to be built over it, that 94-year-old Thomas Faunce, a town record keeper and the son of a pilgrim who arrived in Plymouth in 1623, reported the rock’s significance. Ever since, Plymouth Rock has been an object of reverence, as a symbol of the founding of a new nation.

“It is important because of what people have turned it into,” says Larry Bird, a curator in the National Museum of American History’s division of political history. “To possess a piece of it is to look at a historical moment in terms of image making and imagery. We choose these moments, and these things become invested with values that continue to speak to us today.”

In 1774, Plymouth Rock was split, horizontally, into two pieces. “Like a bagel,” writes John McPhee in “Travels of the Rock,” a story that appeared in the New Yorker in 1990. (Bird considers McPhee’s story one of the best pieces written about the rock.) “There were those who feared and those who hoped that the break in the rock portended an irreversible rupture between England and the American colonies,” writes McPhee. Actually, the upper half was transported to the town square where it was used to rile up New Englanders to want to gain independence from the Mother Country. Meanwhile, over the course of the next century, people, wanting a stake in the history, slowly chipped away at the half of the rock still on shore.

The National Museum of American History has two pieces of Plymouth Rock in its collection. “The one that I like is painted with a little affidavit by Lewis Bradford, who is a descendent of William Bradford,” says Bird. “He paints on it the exact moment of time in which he chips it from the ‘Mother Rock.’” The label on the small, four-inch by two-inch rock reads, “Broken from the Mother Rock by Mr. Lewis Bradford on Tues. 28th of Dec. 1850 4 1/2 o’clock p.m.” The artifact was donated to the museum in 1911 by the family of Gustavus Vasa Fox, a former Assistant Secretary of the Navy.

Much larger, weighing in at 100 pounds, the second hunk of rock was once part of a 400-pound portion owned by the Plymouth Antiquarian Society. The organization came into possession of the rock in the 1920s; it bought the Sandwich Street Harlow House, where the stone was being used as a doorstep. The society ended up breaking the 400-pound rock into three pieces, and the museum acquired one in 1985.

“Like a Lincoln fence rail piece, a tiny piece of Mount Vernon or even a piece of the Bastille, Plymouth Rock is part of who we are as a people,” says Bird.

Bird plans to feature the piece of Plymouth Rock chipped by Lewis Bradford in his forthcoming book, The Triumphal Souvenir. The book and its coinciding exhibition, planned for 2013, highlight personal mementos of the historical past.

Former Smithsonian Institution Secretary Michael Heyman. Photo courtesy Richard Strauss, Smithsonian Institution.

I. Michael Heyman, who served as the tenth Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, passed away Saturday at the age of 81. He died at his home in Berkeley, California, after a long battle with emphysema and is survived by his wife, son and three grandchildren.

Heyman, a native of Manhattan, graduated from Dartmouth College in 1951 and served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps during the Korean War. After studying at Yale Law School, he worked as a clerk for Chief Justice Earl Warren and went on to join the law faculty at University of California, Berkeley in 1959. His 31-year tenure at the university included ten as Chancellor and he was credited with steering Berkeley through several challenges and growing fundraising efforts effectively to prosper despite state budget cuts.

In 1994, Heyman became the first non-scientist to head the Smithsonian Institution. Early on he faced multiple challenges. When an exhibition on the Enola Gay, the Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, triggered criticism from politicians and military groups, he tackled the controversy, crafting new guidelines for the making and planning of exhibitions. Another exhibition on sweatshops was also a lightning rod for controversy and Heyman was able to effectively allay concerns.

Heyman went on to use his skill in galvanizing support and raising funds to strengthen and diversify the Institution’s offerings. His efforts led to the construction of the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., and in 1999, he secured the largest donation in the Institution’s history to build the Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles Airport in Chantilly, Virginia.

In 1996, to mark the Smithsonian Institution’s 150th anniversary, Heyman launched a nationwide exhibition tour and created the Smithsonian Affiliations Program, which now encompasses 169 museums across the country. His tenure also marked a growing emphasis on inclusion within the Smithsonian Institution, as he founded the Smithsonian Latino Center and Asian Pacific American Program.

“In his five years as Secretary, he helped usher in a more dynamic Smithsonian, an Institution more thoroughly engaged with the American people,” wrote current Secretary G. Wayne Clough. “Mike Heyman was unflinchingly optimistic about the Smithsonian’s ability to be a force for knowledge and inspiration in our society.”