Tai Shan, the Zoo's four-year-old panda will return to China sometime early in 2010. See the adorable Butterstick in person while you still can. Photo courtesy of the Zoo.

The year 2010 marks the end of the aughts, a term that was thankfully rarely applied. But now as we stand at the cusp of a new decade, we have the same problem. What will we call this one?

Are we in our teens?

We’ll leave that decision to greater minds.

Meanwhile, the team at the Around the Mall blog, have a assembled our official list of the Top Ten Things that you simply must do at the Smithsonian this year.

1. Famous directors George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are both fans of the artist Norman Rockwell. Starting in July 2010, 50 paintings from the Lucas and Spielberg collections will be on display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

2. A Smithsonian Magazine favorite, the Annual Smithsonian Kite Festival promises to be an engineering challenge. Learn from the Around the Mall team’s mistakes and design the winning kite.

3. Get in touch with your inner sleuth and try to follow Dan Brown’s latest character, Peter Solomon, the fictional Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, as he ventures through Washington, D.C. While you’re at it, try to debunk Brown’s myths about the Smithsonian Institution. We found some, but see if you can uncover any more.

4. Every year since 1967, more than one million people gather on the National Mall for the Smithsonian Folklife Festival for more than two weeks of cultural immersion and exploration. This year’s event, June 24–28 and July 1–5, will feature México, Asian Pacific American communities, and an inside look at what it would be like to work at the Smithsonian.

5. Follow in Capt. Rob Plagmann’s footsteps and design an elaborate proposal based on a Smithsonian exhibition. Read all the juicy details of Plagmann’s proposal here.

6. Try to make a scientific discovery and get it in the Smithsonian collection. A young girl found a vertebra at the recently opened Dinosaur Park in Laurel, Maryland. Per an agreement, all significant finds will make their way to the Smithsonian. The park is open to the public the 1st and 3rd Saturdays of each month from 12-4pm.

7. Should discovery in the ground fail, try the sky. The public observatory at the National Air and Space Museum, come summer, will be packed as the skies clear and objects are visible. The Around the Mall team visited the observatory in September to get a sneak peak, but unfortunately, it was cloudy.

8. Be one of the first to walk through the newest hall in the Natural History Museum. The Hall of Human Origins opens March 17 and will answer the question, What does it mean to be human? The hall’s festive opening coincides with the museum’s 100th anniversary on the Mall. Check back for upcoming events and programs planned for the celebration.

9. In 2009, the Hope Diamond was removed from its setting and displayed by itself for the first time ever. In early 2010, the stone will be set into a custom Harry Winston design to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the gem’s donation to the museum. Fight the crowds and get a look at the diamond in its new, limited-time setting. Read about its removal on the Around the Mall blog. Explore the three designs that were put to a popular vote and see the winner.

10. The heartbreaking news that Tai Shan will be heading back to China in early 2010 was confirmed in December. Since the announcement, fans of Butterstick have flocked to the National Zoo to bid a fond farewell to the Zoo’s most beloved bear. Zoo officials have said Tai Shan will make the journey in the first quarter of 2010, so there is still have time to say goodbye. See our announcement and a photo gallery of Butterstick’s four and a half years in Washington, D.C.

(Plan to make a visit this year to the Smithsonian? Please see our companion site, goSmithsonian.com for help with making reservations, finding exhibits, and making your own personal itinerary.)

In this piece included in the Renwick Craft Invitational 2009—closing on January 3—artist Christyl Boger pairs an inflatable pool toy with the nude figure of a woman. Photo by Gene Young

With the new year almost here, we’re rounding up a list of exhibitions that close shortly after the calendar turns. So make a New Year’s resolution to see more art, learn more history and experience more culture, and get out to these shows before they close.

Renwick Gallery
Staged Stories: Renwick Craft Invitational 2009
Closes: 01/03/2010
This installation of the biannual invitational includes artists who work with ceramics, glass and even yarn. Read more about the artists and their work here.

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Anne Truitt: Perception and Reflection
Closes: 01/03/2010
This first-ever retrospective of Anne Truitt’s 50-year career displays both her iconic sculptures and her lesser-known drawing. For some pre-visit background, check out this in-depth look at her career as well as an Around the Mall piece about the exhibition’s opening.

Smithsonian Institution Building, the Castle
World View: Smithsonian Magazine Photo Contest
Closes: 01/17/2010
Need some background? Read this post about the winning photographs.

National Portrait Gallery
Presidents in Waiting
Closes: 01/03/2010
This exhibition takes a look at the lives of 14 of our nation’s vice presidents who eventually became president, from John Adams to George H.W. Bush.

Faces of the Frontier: Photographic Portraits from the American West, 1845-1924
Closes: 01/24/2010
Get a feel for the types of personalities included in this photographic exhibition by reading this Around the Mall round-up.

Smithsonian American Art Museum
1934: A New Deal for Artists
Closes: 01/03/2010
In this post, the Around the Mall team ponders whether this exhibition about depression-era artists is a look into the past or a look into our future.

Graphic Masters II: Highlights from the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Closes: 01/10/2010
The second in a series, this show displays works on paper from artists from the 1920s to the 1960s including Edward Hopper, Willem de Kooning and Andrew Wyeth.

The Honor of Your Company Is Requested: President Lincoln’s Inaugural Ball
Closes: 01/18/2010
This concentrated exhibit focuses on Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural ball held in 1865 just six weeks before his assassination.

What’s It All Mean: William T. Wiley in Retrospect
Closes: 01/24/2010
An intriguing exhibition that keeps revealing layer after layer of information. Read about artist William Wiley’s inaugural pinball game in the new exhibition as well as a Q&A.

National Air and Space Museum
Alan Bean: Painting Apollo, First Artist on Another World
Closes: 01/13/2010
Alan Bean flew worked for NASA for 18 years and was the fourth man to walk on the moon. He creates art using moon dust, moon boots and other lunar artifacts. Read an interview with the first astronaut-turned-artist here.

National Museum of American History
Bittersweet Harvest: The Bracero Program, 1942-1964
Closes: 01/03/2010
Leonard Nadal was hired in 1956 to document the entire day-to-day experience of the Bracero workers. To get a taste of the powerful images by Nadal, browse through our photo gallery.

National Museum of Natural History
Dig It! The Secrets of Soil
Closes: 01/03/2010
This long-running exhibition gets down and dirty with soil—which scientists say is a much-misunderstood but essential resource. Read about the exhibition’s opening here.

National Museum of the American Indian, George Gustav Heye Center in New York City
Annie Pootoogook
Closes: 01/10/2010
This exhibition of Inuit artist Annie Pootoogook features 39 drawings that depict social, economic and cultural realities of northern Canada.

Andrea Carlson
Closes: 01/10/2010
This Minnesota-based artist’s work analyzes the meaning behind museums and their collections.

Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
Falnama: The Book of Omens
Closes: 01/24/2010
The Falnama is a collection of illustrated manuscripts that sultans consulted for omens. Read a primer on the ancient book of secrets here.

S. Dillon Ripley Center, International Gallery
Accelerate: A National Juried Exhibition for Emerging Artists with Disabilities, Ages 16-25
Closes: 01/06/2010
This show displays works from 15 award-winning artists with disabilities—ranging in age from 16 to 25.

Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum
Design for a Living World
Closes: 01/04/2010
For this show, leading designers were given a natural material from a Nature Conservancy site. Isaac Mizrahi fashioned a dress out of Alaskan salmon skin. Check out Joseph Caputo’s magazine interview with Mizrahi.

Charles Froke used more than 100 pounds of gingerbread to recreate the Smithsonian Castle.

Charles Froke, the executive pastry chef at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, D.C., spent more than 100 hours creating a replica of the Smithsonian Castle using only gingerbread and frosting—100 and 50 pounds respectively. What’s more is that he did the whole thing by himself. (His staff had to worry about all the holiday parties.)

He had wanted to do the Castle years ago, but a promotion and transfer to Miami got in the way. So, when he was transferred back, he knew this would be the first structure he attempted. “I really wanted to do the Smithsonian Castle,” he said. “And I never got a chance to do it. Now that I’m back in town, it’s my first sculpture.”

But the iconic building on the Mall posed some challenges for Froke. “The building is crazy,” he said. “It has so many different columns and so many different towers. That’s going to be the hardest part.” At one point, when he tried to attach an angled roof, the whole piece fell down. “There’s always things that go wrong,” he says. “But it’s just gingerbread, so we persevere.”

The impressive centerpiece was revealed last week and will be on display in the hotel’s restaurant through January, but we got a sneak peek at how Froke created the Castle.

Photographer James Cook battled harsh weather to capture this image of the ride to the site of the Wounded Knee massacre to commemorate the centennial. Photo courtesy of the American Indian Museum.

On December 29, 1990, photographer James Cook caught sight in the distance of the more than 350 horseback riders who were recreating the ride to Wounded Knee, South Dakota, as part of a centennial memorial of the massacre that occurred there in 1890. The riders were near the end of their 7-day, 300-mile journey. Cook and his assistant traveling by car hurried to meet up with the group for a closer view.

Recently, the National Museum of the America Indian acquired a print of the image that Cook eventually captured that day. It is included in the exhibition, “A Song for the Horse Nation” that opened in November at the George Gustav Heye Center in New York City. The museum also has a print of the image in its permanent collection.

Since 1986, the descendants of those killed at Wounded Knee Creek have recreated the ride to the site. More than 350 men, women and children were to be escorted by US troops so they could be transported to Omaha, Nebraska, to be resettled on Indian reservations. When a medicine man and others failed to comply, a shoot-out ensued. In less than an hour, 150 Lakota and 25 soldiers were dead. A three-day blizzard followed the battle, freezing the dead bodies and killing the wounded.

The weather Cook experienced as he tried to document the ride mirrored the blizzard of 1890. Temperatures hovered around -54 degrees and harsh winds blew across the arid landscape. He learned early on to rewind the film slowly, or, stiffened by the cold, it would shatter. If he exhaled when his face was too close to the camera, his breath would freeze his face to the viewfinder.

But Cook and his assistant kept at it. “At one point, I hopped out and managed to get right in their path,” he says. “So as they came across the hill, there was a fence line to help steer them to me. I was able to get several frames as they approached. They came down and just engulfed me as they rode on through.”

After getting all the images he knew he would get, Cook, caught up in the intensity, joined the riders. “I couldn’t resist just turning and running with them, gear as well,” he says. “It was just part of the excitement.” When he looked through the several hundred frames he had taken that day, one stood out. “There are just so many little elements in it,” he says. “They’re close enough to be recognizable. There was one rider off to the side that stopped to watch everyone come down over the hill. He was framed just right between others. There were no other frames that even came close.”

Cook began photographing native peoples in the late 1980s because, as he says,  the richness of the culture fascinated him. Cook is of European descent, but says he doesn’t know much about his own cultural heritage. “I started realizing that the Native Americans had a lot going with their cultural roots and preserving their heritage,” he says. “I admire that; I envy that.”

To Cook, photographing Native Americans is about documenting a specific point in history. “It’s all evolving, and I think it’s important to document things as they are in our day and age,” he says.  The passage of time is evident in his “The Ride To Wounded Knee” image as well. “We got the headdresses and horses, but one of the riders is wearing a snowmobile outfit as well,” he says.

This garden was planted by Rose Standish Nichols and is styled after the Spanish-Moorish gardens in Granada. The garden is called the House of the Four Winds and is located in Lake Forest, Illinois. The garden was on tour for the Garden Club of America Annual Meeting in 1919. Photo courtesy of the Archives of American Gardens.

When daffodils begin to peer,

With heigh! the doxy, over the dale,

Why, then comes in the sweet o’ the year.

—The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare

After a slow start, winter is finally here in Washington, D.C. And freezing conditions are chilling the rest of the U.S.

But the Smithsonian Archives of American Gardens is trying to heat things back up. The archive recently created a Flickr page and loaded 25 rarely seen images of gardens from the “golden era” of American gardening, the 1920s and ’30s. They depict private estate gardens ranging from Virgina to California. Many of the gardens pictured, such as one created by Thomas Jefferson at the University of Virginia and the elegant Thornewood Castle in Tacoma, Washington, are now open to the public as historic homes, gardens, parks, arboreta and wilderness areas. Thornewood Castle, by the way, is now a bed and breakfast.

But these 25 are barely a drop in the bucket. The entire archives contains documents for another 6,300 gardens and includes 80,000 images and records, spanning the centuries between the colonial period and today. In 2009 alone, it received records from 48 gardens.  The archives, whose mission is “to preserve and highlight significant aspects of gardening in the United States,” is a treasure trove of both the famous and the forgotten—men and women who have sought to make the landscape their canvas—Marian Coffin, Beatrix Farrand, Lawrence Halprin, Hare & Hare, Umberto Innocenti, Gertrude Jekyll, Jens Jensen, Warren Manning, the Olmsted Brothers, Charles Platt, Ellen Biddle Shipman, and Fletcher Steele.

Instrument maker Benito Hernández Villagrama carefully cuts the inlay for a guitarrón, a mariachi bass, in the workshop in front of his house. Photo by Cristina Díaz-Carrera

Every year since 1967, more than one million people gather on the National Mall over two weeks for cultural immersion and exploration. Last year, visitors learned about the power of words in African American culture, the culture of Wales and music in Latino culture. The three programs for the 2010 Smithsonian Folklife Festival to be held June 24–28 and July 1–5, 2010 have been announced:

• México

• Asian Pacific American Connections

• Smithsonian Inside Out

México Profundo focuses on the more than 62 indigenous groups of our Southern neighbor inspired by Guillermo Bonfil Batalla’s 1987 book México Profundo. The program will celebrate Mexico’s Independence Bicentenary (1810-2010) and Revolution Centenary (1910-2010) in collaboration with the National Council for Culture and Arts (Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes) of Mexico. Four thematic areas will structure the program: the plaza, the market, the workshop and the field. Participants will engage visitors in traditional activities including ceremonial and social dances, satirical processions, traditional and rock music, food, healing traditions, farming and fishing techniques and tequila production. Some participants include the Teenek of the Huasteca region of San Luis Potosí, who will reenact a tradition from their cosmology as they fly on the palo volantín (roughly translating to flying stick), and an artisan family from Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca.

Three youths from the community of El Ciruelo, Oaxaca, perform the baile de artesa, or artesa dance. An artesa is a long, hollow wooden platform upon which barefoot dancers articulate rhythms that accompany the music. Photo by Cristina Díaz-Carrera

The Asian Pacific American Connections program will focus on the Asian culture in the United States. There are approximately 30 Asian American and 24 Pacific Island American groups in the U.S., and Washington, D.C. has more than 350,000 peoples of Asian descent living in the metro area. The program is part of a research and public presentation project between the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program and partners with the University of Maryland, local communities and other organizations. The project documents the culture of Asian Americans and Asian Pacific Americans living specifically in or around Washington, D.C. The Folklife program will include theater, music, dance performances, language, calligraphy traditions, martial arts, healing arts, ritual arts, food demonstrations, sports presentations.

The Smithsonian Inside Out program will allow visitors to step behind the velvet ropes and experience the culture behind the museum galleries. Smithsonian workers, including curators, archivists, conservators, security experts and exhibition fabricators will present research and knowledge to the public. The program will specifically address how the Smithsonian is tackling four large thematic challenges: unlocking the mysteries of the universe, understanding and sustaining a biodiverse planet, valuing world cultures and understanding the American experience. Behind the scenes activities will include caring for the Smithsonian’s moon rocks and meteorites, examining pre-Columbian American communities, tracking climate change with scientists and comparing the traditional techniques of West African and Southwestern U.S. adobe builders.

Four chameleon forest dragons were born at the National Zoo on Nov. 11, the first of their kind to be born at the zoo. Photo by Mehgan Murphy.

The National Zoo welcomed four chameleon forest dragons on Nov. 11—the first ever born at the zoo. The babies’ parents arrived at the Zoo’s Rock Creek facility in June 2009, and the mother laid four eggs while in quarantine. Very little is known about the species, so the little ones are being carefully observed off display. Visitors can, however, still see the adults inside the Reptile Discovery Center.

The name chameleon forest dragon is a little misleading. They are neither chameleons nor dragons, but are a type of lizard called an agamid. Members of this family of lizards are commonly called dragons or dragon lizards. The chameleon forest dragon is so named for its dragon-like triangular head and spiky, leaf-shaped ridge plates on the crown of its head and back.

While they aren’t chameleons, the skin of these lizards changes color similar to a chameleon. When they’re born, the skin is a bright lime green. As the animals age, the skin either stays green or changes to a brown-tan color depending on the dominant colors occurring in the animal’s surroundings. This helps it to stay hidden in either tree leaves or the bark.  Native to Indonesia and Malaysia, the lizards will eventually grow up to 12 inches.

Two of the National Zoo's arapaima fish died recently. Photo by Jessie Cohen.

Two adult arapaima fish died recently at the National Zoo. The first fish died on Thursday, Nov. 19, and the second fish was found dead Friday, Nov. 27. Zoo staff suspect a bacterial infection, and further tests including cultures and microscopic evaluations, should provide staff with further information.

A third adult fish is in poor health and being treated with antibiotics. While staff have observed some improvement, the fish’s prognosis is not yet clear. The zoo’s fourth arapaima, an adolescent, seems to be in good health but is being treated with antibiotics as a precaution. Catfish and pacus also live in the tank and are all in good health.

The two deceased fish lived in the Zoo’s Amazonia exhibit for 16 years. Zoo staff estimate that the two fish were 17 years old. The lifespan of arapaima in captive populations is generally about 17 years.

The arapaima is one of the largest freshwater fish in the world and is native to the Amazon and the Orinoco basin in South America. The fish can grow up to eight feet in length, though the average is between six and seven. The arapaima breathes air and stays submerged for up to 20 minutes at a time. Because the fish stay close to the surface of the water, they are more vulnerable to human hunters. They are a popular food source in South America, and the species is becoming rarer but is not yet endangered.

Shuttle astronauts used this trainer to practice the difficult task of replacing the Power Control Unit, the electrical nerve center of the Hubble Space Telescope, on a 2002 servicing mission. Photo by Eric Long

This week, the National Air and Space Museum unveiled the first phase of its new permanent exhibit about human spaceflight, “Moving Beyond Earth.”

The gallery focuses on the shuttle and space-station era and includes items that were just recently doing their jobs in space, like the Hubble’s Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement, or COSTAR. That piece, which was a corrective optics package that worked in conjunction with the Hubble telescope’s mirror, came back to Earth this past May during the last servicing mission.

The artifacts in this space have a very different feel than the traditional, historical objects in other galleries. In fact, NASA astronaut John Grunsfeld, who was on hand for the opening celebrations, noted the absurdity of even calling them artifacts. Just a few years ago, Grunsfeld was using the HST Power Control Unit Trainer, another new artifact now on display, to practice for his missions—he went on three.

“We were very short on artifacts because all the artifacts from the shuttle era were still in use,” said Valerie Neal, curator of the new hall. Neal refers to the current gallery as a “footprint for the fully built-out space” that will be completed in the next two years.

The star at the museum these day is another Hubble instrument, the piano-sized Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, or WFPC2, which also on view in an adjacent hall.The WFPC2 was installed on the Hubble in 1993 to correct the telescopes blurred images. Averting near disaster for the program.

When Hubble first went up, it was called an American disgrace, says Edward Weiler, who was the chief scientist on the Hubble Telescope for nearly 20 years. The WFPC2, he says, “turned Hubble into a great American comeback story.”  The instruments might be the objects on display in the museum, but Grunsfeld says there’s more to the story than just the artifacts. “It wasn’t the instruments that saved Hubble,” he says. “People saved Hubble.

The WFPC2 was the first instrument to demonstrate the unique capability of astronomical imaging from space. Photo by Eric Long.

History buffs will no doubt head for the star artifacts, but younger visitors are likely to head for the screens. The hall is chock-full of games and play stations. Visitors can sit at a control panel and make decisions on NASA missions as if they were seated in a real life Mission Control. Another interactive demonstrates decision making for all sorts of things like planning new components to the space station, budgeting health fitness, food stores and living condition staples. And still another invites visitors to discover a compatible career for them in space, no matter their interest, by answering questions such as their favorite subject in school and what their preferred super hero power would be. (Two of my top jobs were librarian and educator.)

The museum’s director Jack Dailey says this gallery has more interactives than any other place in the museum. “We have long had a desire to add more interactives to stimulate and inspire the younger generation,” he said. “The first thing a young person looks for is the screen. They find it and immediately go to it and start touching it.”

Linda Nochlin will speak at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Wednesday, November 18 at 7PM. The portrait of her and her late husband, Richard Pommer is by Philip Pearlstein. Photo is by Shandor Hassan.

Linda Nochlin, the Lila Acheson Wallace Professor of Modern Art at the New York University Institute of Fine Arts, pioneered the study of women and art with her groundbreaking 1971 essay, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” Considered the foremost scholar of feminist art history, she has authored numerous publications, including Women, Art, and Power and Other Essays (1988) and Representing Women (1999). Nochlin recently spoke with Abby Callard.

Almost 40 years ago, you wrote about the lack of great female artists. How about now? I think things have changed. I think the idea of greatness has changed as a result of that article and other work in the field of art history. I don’t think there’s a single standard of greatness anymore. Many more women have entered into the realm of great artists. I still think it’s a very good paper, and I still think it’s illuminating to people who know nothing about art or women in art even though circumstance may have changed and it also sheds light on other areas of achievement and expertise, not just women. And other groups, racial groups, national groups that have been cashed out. And the whole point is to show that none of this is genetic, in-built, natural etc. it’s all part of a complex social and institutional organization.

Where did the idea for your article come from? I had come back from a year abroad to teach at Vassar, and some friends told me about the feminist movement. It was 1969. There’d been student revolutions. But there hadn’t been a feminist revolution. Back home there was the Red Stockings newsletter and Off Our Backs. A lot of stuff was happening, so I immediately changed my seminar at Vassar to “Women in Art” and I divided it into two parts: “Women Artists” and “The Representation of Women.” And it was one of the greatest classes I’ve ever taught. Students demanded to make not just two reports, but three or four. We made the most amazing discoveries. At graduation that year, a gallery owner said to me, “You know Linda, I’d love to show women artists, but why are there no great women artists?” That just started me ticking. I went and did research. And I just kept thinking about that, and writing, and writing, and writing. I read very specific lives of artists. One thing just lead to another, like a creative discovery. Almost like scientists must feel when they find some new way of looking at the universe. I was looking at the world differently. I’d always been a very political person. But this was different. I still think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done.

What is the difference between a good, respectable artist and a great artist? I guess a kind of uniqueness and impact on the field itself. I would pick the figure of Cezanne. This is an artist who not only was brilliant and interesting but changed the course of art, changed what we think of as beauty, changed what we thought about the relationship between paint and the canvas. Whatever we mean by great, he was it. Everyone would say Michelangelo. He’s not one that I particularly like, but I can recognize his talent.

Which female artists have crossed that barrier? Louise Bourgeois for one. She’s one of the most famous and sought after women in the world. Cindy Sherman. Looking back, Eva Hesse certainly made an enormous impact on the field of sculpture. In photography we could point to a lot of women artists. I could go on and on. Video and performance art has been contributed to enormously by female artists. I think there are realms of art like video and performance, which are important now, where women really are great artists.

What about painting? I hate to use that word even. Mary Cassatt. Let’s see, who else? Georgia O’Keeffe. In fact, one might say that she is one of the most famous painters in the world. Helen Frankenthaler is a major figure.

You’re credited with inventing the field of feminist art history. Where do you see the field going? I think it is becoming different. I think there’s a new generation of new feminists in the field of art history that are making it different. There are also women coming from other parts of the world. They are extending the notion of what is art. I think that’s a real interesting problem nowadays. Certain kinds of performances, certain kinds of installations, certain kinds of actions that were not included within the field of art are now being included, and women are practicing within those fields. So I think it’s both things. I think it’s both geographic, if you want to put it that way, and conceptual in terms of what is art. Expanding the borders of what art may be.

But you’re interested in more than female artists. I am. Very much so. I’m interested in 19th century art in general and particularly Gustave Courbet, whom I’ve written a book on. He was the subject of my dissertation. I’m interested in impressionism, post-impressionism. I’m interested in 20th century art, and I’m very interested in contemporary art and in criticism. I’ve recently taught classes on artists as writers. I’m interested in the relationship between word and image. But I’m very interested in the art of the 20th and 21st century and what’s going on today.

So what is going on today? I think there’s kind of a leaning toward a more open field just as I said about women artists from other geographic spots in the world and from creating within an enlarged area of art practice. I think that’s true universally; it’s not just true of women. I think criticism, there are a few trends, if you want to put it that way. Then I think there are people who are developing new theoretical bases for the discussion of art. And I think among some of the younger grad students I know there are people who are asking if there aren’t other ways of doing art history. More unconventional ways. Ways not so much tied to traditional, scholarly art historical practice but perhaps leave more room open for poetic thought, or personal ways of dealing with art or just opening up the field to other kinds of discourse, other kinds of writing practices let’s say.

Examples? Well, first of all, bringing one’s own emotions and feeling into the discussion. But I don’t mean in a sloppy way, not just pouring. But making it a part of the discourse. Another way is introducing gender into the discussion as I did. I did a long piece in a catalog once about Courbet’s studio where I suggested reversing the cast of characters. Making it into a woman’s painting where all the men became the nudes and the women became the dominant figures in the painting and so on. So I think there are imaginative ways of interpreting art that can be used in bringing enlightenment. The Clarice Smith Distinguished Lectures in American Art presents Linda Nochlin, Wednesday, November 18 at 7 PM. Free tickets are required for this event and are available beginning at 6 PM in the museum’s G Street Lobby. Limit two tickets per person; no seat-holding please. Auditorium doors open at 6:30 p.m. and close promptly at 7 p.m. Reception follows.

View live Webcast of Linda Nochlin’s lecture here.

One of the four elegant crested tinamou chicks that was hatched at the National Zoo in late October. The four chicks are the Zoo's first ever successful birth of the species. Photo by Mehgan Murphy.

The stork has delivered some awfully cute new packages to the National Zoo.

For the first time ever, four elegant crested tinamou chicks were born at the National Zoo in late October. For just the second time ever, a pygmy falcon chick hatched.

The elegant crested tinamou chicks’ mother arrived at the Zoo just five months ago to join the chicks’ father. In this species, the female lays the olive green eggs, but the male is left to protect and care for them. Zoo staff report the male tinamou has done a fine fathering job so far. The birds are native to Chile and Argentina and prefer dry savannahs and open woodlands. While hunting them for food and sport is popular, their population remains stable in the wild.

This pygmy falcon was born a few weeks ago with no feathers. See how the chick has grown at the National Zoo. Photo by Mehgan Murphy.

The second pygmy falcon to be hatched at the  National Zoo arrived on October 20. The little guy is still pretty dependent—pygmy falcons are born weighing only 5 grams and are unable to see or regulate their own temperature. But this chick is growing fast; Zoo staff estimate that it’ll be flying in a couple of days. To keep the chick strong, it is being fed a varied diet of anoles, pinky mice, crickets, fuzzy mice, hairless mice, meal worms and natural balance meat cubes and recieves daily supplemental feedings. This can be difficult because the chick’s parents become very aggressive during the feedings.

All the new arrivals are on display at the zoo, but the pygmy falcon spends most of its time in the nest, so visitors have to be stealthy to catch a peek.

Merlin, the National Zoo's 27-year-old sloth bear, died this morning. Photo courtesy of the Zoo.

It’s a sad day at the National Zoo. Merlin, the National Zoo’s 27-year-old sloth bear, died this morning after a 48-hour illness. Merlin was born at the Zoo in 1981, and helped to introduce millions of visitors to this fascinating, but unfamiliar, bear species.

On Monday morning, Merlin underwent a routine physical examination. The examination went well, but Merlin did not fully recover from the anesthetic by the afternoon. Veterinarians also noticed that he had vomited some fluid with blood in it. Because of his medical history—he suffered a gastric volvulus, “twisted stomach” in 1994—staff members evaluated him again on Monday.

Veterinarians did blood work, ultrasounds and radiographs and decided that he needed surgery to correct a partially twisted spleen. After the procedure, Merlin seemed to be getting better, but further blood work revealed possible circulatory shock and renal failure. Staff stayed with Merlin 24 hours a day for two days until he passed away this morning.

Merlin fathered seven cubs, the youngest of which—3-year-old Balawat—left the National Zoo earlier this year to join a female cub at the Akron Zoo in Ohio. Balawat and Merlin bonded last fall after Hana, Balawat’s mother, was not receptive to mating with Merlin. Zookeepers introduced the two males last October. It took a month or so, but the pair eventually hit it off. Staff found them playing together for the first time in November. After playing, the keepers reported, the two sloth bears curled up together and took a nap.

Sloth bears, who use their curved claws to pick up ants and termites, are native to the Indian sub-continent. They use their long snout and lips to create a vacuum-like seal to suck up the insects. Sloth bears are the only bears to carry young on their backs. National Zoo scientists, engaged in sloth bear conservation efforts since the 1970s, estimate that about 6,000 to 11,000 sloth bears remain in the wild. The animals face critical loss of habitat and as a result, the IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species categorizes sloth bears as vulnerable.

Merlin’s death at age 27 —the oldest sloth bear in captivity died at 29—will be reviewed. A necropsy will be performed to determine the exact cause of Merlin’s death, but results won’t be available for a few weeks. Two female sloth bears, Hana and Khali, remain on exhibit.

Smithsonian American Art Museum staff install Albert Paley’s Portal Gates at the museum’s Renwick Gallery. Photo by Gene Young.

The Renwick Gallery’s famed Portal Gates by master sculptor and blacksmith Albert Paley are once again back home, reinstalled last week on the second floor in a custom-made alcove, after going on exhibit at Iowa State University. The gates have been a much-loved staple at the gallery since their installation in 1976, when they met with critical acclaim and praise from the press. The Washington Post called them “one of the most important iron and brass works of art since Louis Sullivan.”

In fact, a work by Louis Sullivan figures in the story of how the gates came to be commissioned by the museum. When the newly renovated Renwick Gallery opened in 1972,  two elevator grills designed by Louis Sullivan for the Stock Exchange in Chicago were lent to the gallery by another Smithsonian museum,  the National Museum of American History, and installed in an alcove adjacent to the museum’s store. But according to the Renwick’s then-director Lloyd Herman, American History officials had second thoughts about the loan once they saw how beautiful the work was at the Renwick. So, “they asked for them back for installation there,” Herman explained in a letter to a visitor in 1982.

After losing the Sullivan elevator grills, the Renwick decided to commission the creation of new artwork from contemporary artists and invited several metalsmiths, including Paley, to submit designs. Paley, an art professor at the University of Rochester in New York and internationally reknowned for his one-of-a-kind jewelry pieces, won the $4,800 commission. His detailed drawings, Herman wrote in the same letter, made a “stunning addition to this fine old building.”

Paley and his assistant, Richard Palmer, spent 3,800 hours and seven months creating the 1,200-pound gates. (For the re-installation, museum staff had to use a crank to lift and position them.) Their scale had an overwhelming effect on the young jeweler.  “I felt rather like Gulliver,” he told the Washington Post.  “It didn’t seem as though the objects I was working on changed in scale but instead it was as if I had suddenly shrunk to Lilliputian size.”

Paley was born in Philadelphia in 1944 and grew up in a middle-class family. He decided against attending college, and instead worked as a salesman in a department store until someone suggested he attend the Tyler School of Art at Temple University. “I got a scholarship,” he told the Post.  “And I realized that art was who I was.” He worked primarily as a jeweler until attending a three-day blacksmith’s workshop at Southern Illinois University in 1970. Today, Paley holds an endowed chair at the Rochester Institute of Technology and continues to work in his studio there.

See more photos from the installation on the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Facebook page.

This little brown bat, found in a New York cave in October 2008, exhibits the telling sign of the white-nose syndrome: white fungus around the nose. Photo by Ryan von Linden/New York Department of Environmental Conservation.

A mysterious disease that presents with a white fungal growth around the nose has been killing bats in the Northeastern United States. It’s been estimated that more than one million bats have already died and the The United States Department of the Interior has declared the illness an “unprecedented wildlife crisis.”

At a press conference last week at the National Zoo, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced $800,000 in grants to combat the white-nose syndrome.

The National Zoo’s Conservation Research Center in Front Royal, Virginia, received a grant to create the first ever captive population of the endangered Virginia big-eared bat. The illness is so serious among this species of bat that it could entirely wipe these creatures entirely in the wild. Currently, fewer than 15,000 Virginia big-eared bats remain in selected caves in Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky and white-nose syndrome has taken its toll in those caves.

“We have been calling [the captive-bat population] an insurance population in the same way that when I have car insurance, I’m hoping I never have a car accident and have to use it,” says Luis Padilla, an associate veterinarian at the Zoo. “But if I do get into a car accident, it will rescue me. While we hope that Virginia big-eared bats do not go extinct in the wild, we’re establishing this captive population because we’re being realistic that there is a very significant, very devastating threat out there.”

Padilla says they will collect a “founder population” of 20 healthy bats starting this week. Because the Virginia big-eared bat has never been kept or bred in captivity, the Zoo’s staff will take extra precautions to ensure the bats remain healthy. The biggest challenge, Padilla says, will be providing them with an adequate diet. After all, bats can eat up to 1,000 mosquitos a day.

White-nose syndrome was detected just three years ago near Albany, New York, when a caver photographed hibernating bats that had the strange white powder-like substance around their noses. He also saw many dead bats lining the floor of the cave. That next year, biologists from the New York Department of Environmental Conservation saw more bats with white noses and even some bats flying around during daylight hours, a time when they normally should have been hibernating. The biologists noted this behavior in five sites in the state of New York that winter.

Fast forward to 2009, when 81 sites in nine Northeastern states are affected. Mortality in some of these caves has reached 90 percent.  Researchers from more than 50 organizations are on the case trying to figure out what causes the fungus and how to stop it. “At this point, we have a lot more questions than answers,” said Jeremy Coleman, who is spearheading the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s effort.

The service also gave grants to organizations that will analyze the susceptibility of the Indiana bat (a common bat in the region), identify ways to stop white-nose syndrome fungal growth, compare immunity and body composition of affected bats to healthy bats, develop a rapid white-nose syndrome field test and establish a way to genetically predict at-risk populations.

A small male spider of a closely related Nephila species lies on top of the giant female showing the extreme difference in size. (Look closely, the male is the light brown thing to the left.) Photo by M. Kuntner.

The largest-ever orb-weaving spider has been discovered by researchers in a remote park in South Africa. Once thought to be extinct, the Nephila komaci was tracked down by Matjaz Kunter, chair of the Institute of Biology of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts and Jonathan Coddington, senior scientist and curator of arachnids and myriapods at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. The duo had made several trips to South Africa specifically to find these species. Until now, N. komaci had successfully evaded the team.

These gold and black arachnids debut just in time for Halloween. But the males get the short stick in this Halloween tale. They’re a boring brown color and tiny, as it turns out, though the scientists are quick to point out that that is the normal size. The females, on the other hand, are giant. Their bodies can measure a whopping 1.5 inches, and their leg span can reach up to 5 inches.

The intricate webs that these creatures weave can measure as much as three feet in diameter—imagine using that as a Halloween decoration.

Be sure to stay tuned for our next Halloween-mystery: Bats in the northeast United States are dying from a peculiar disease that leaves them with white noses. Smithsonian scientists are on a mission to learn why.

Check out the size of that web! Photo by M. Kuntner.