The National Zoo's anteater, Maripi, gave birth to a baby anteater early this month. Mehgan Murphy, National Zoo

Air and Space Lions—Understandably, folks over at the AirSpace blog have been feeling a bit envious of all the attention the National Zoo has been getting on account of their seven new lion cubs (ATM has covered their birth, swim tests, physical exams and outdoor exploration in recent months). To show that the Air and Space Museum can be cute too, they’ve unearthed a series of lion photos from the Air and Space archives. The photos are mostly of pilot Roscoe Turner and his partner in flight, Gilmore the lion. In 1930, Turner was flying for the Gilmore Oil Company, whose mascot was a lion head; Turner decided to fly with a real lion to show some spirit. The post features pictures of Turner with Gilmore the lion as a tiny cub, but also as a full-grown lion.

Rockwell Closing—The American Art Museum’s Norman Rockwell exhibit, “Telling Stories: Norman Rockwell From the Collections of Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas,” is closing on January 2. One group of stories that the exhibit leaves largely untouched is that of the many people who posed for Rockwell, mostly from Arlington, Vermont, where the artist grew up. Last summer, there was a Rockwell model reunion in Arlington, where 80 former Rockwell models came together to reminisce. Eye Level has a few anecdotes from some of the participants.

New Anteater Born at the National Zoo! As if lion cubs weren’t enough, earlier in December the National Zoo’s giant anteater, Maripi, gave birth to a male pup. This was Maripi’s third child in the past three years (her other pups are now at zoos in France and Nashville, Tennessee). Initially, the pup had low body temperature, causing concern among the keepers, but after weeks of monitoring both the pup and his mother in the hospital, they have moved them back into their exhibit. They report that both seem healthy and Maripi is taking good care of her offspring.

Race to the Museum—There are 73 cars in the American History Museum’s automobile collection, but only 14 are actually on display. Vote for your favorite of eight cars on O Say Can You See by January 12, and the two most popular cars will be put on exhibit from January 22 through February 21. The options include a 1997 electric car, a General Motors solar-powered car from 1987 and an Oldsmobile “runabout” from way back in 1903, to name a few.

William Steinway's 2,500-page diary spans 36 years. Courtesy of the American History Museum

The newest exhibit in the American History Museum’s Albert H. Small Documents gallery has been a long time coming. The germ of the idea began in 1967 1966 when Cynthia Adams Hoover, then a young curator at the American History Museum, first visited the Steinway family in New York in search of material for an exhibit on American music. Founded in 1853 by German immigrants Henry Engelhard Steinway and his three sons, Charles, Henry and William, Steinway & Sons famously manufactured pianos that are widely used today in popular and classical music.

On that 1966 visit, a diary kept by William Steinway caught Hoover’s eye. The entries documented a period from 1861, three days before Steinway’s marriage, to around the turn of the 19th century. Hoover found the 2,500-page diary to be a rich chronicle of 19th century America, with commentary on events occurring before the Civil War to urban development to the immigrant experience, all through the lens of a prominent New York businessman. Hoover persuaded the Steinways to let her use the diary for research. More than 40 years later and after more than 25,000 hours of research by one hundred different volunteers, parts of the diary are now on display in an the exhibit “A Gateway to the 19th Century: The William Steinway Diary, 1861-1896.”

“We just started [transcribing the diary], and we didn’t have a real strong path, we just wanted to make it available to people,” said Hoover at the exhibit opening. Although the American History museum didn’t officially acquire the diary until 1996, co-editor Edwin M. Good was able to start transcribing it in the 1980s. In recent years, the project has benefited from the help of retired economists, physicians and others who have taken charge of researching passages in the diary that pertained to their respective fields.

“This is very much a classic German-American immigrant story, but also the story of a young man who is a witness to history,” says Anna Karvellas, managing editor of the project. The exhibit delves into the Steinway business, the New York City draft riots that nearly destroyed the Steinway factories, German singing societies that Steinway participated in, the Rapid Transit Commission that he pioneered, and his role in developing Astoria, Queens, where the Steinway factories were located.

“When we started in the 80′s, we were thinking books. But no publisher that we talked to wanted to do it. They would do one volume [of the diary], but that was it,” said Hoover. But with the advent of the vast resources of the Internet, Hoover decided to make the diary available as an online resource. Now, with the opening of the exhibit, the project team—including Hoover, Karvellas, Good and project coordinator Dena Adams—has put the entire diary online, complete with a full transcription and some sample annotations for the entries. (The project is ongoing and pending funding, plans are to add more than 30,000 interlinked annotations in the coming years.) The online diary is searchable by topic or keyword, so anyone who wants to can learn about the life of this 19th century New York entrepreneur.

“A Gateway to the 19th Century: The William Steinway Diary, 1861-1896″ will be on display in the Albert H. Small Documents Gallery of the American History Museum through April 8, 2011.

Updated 1/6/2011: This post includes new information about the future plans of the diary project.

The Smithsonian castle’s Christmas tree has a circle of poinsettias below it for more holiday good cheer. Photo by Eric Long

The halls are decked in red and green, and there’s a winter chill in the air. The folks at the Smithsonian Gardens have taken great pains to decorate the Smithsonian Institution for the holidays. They have grown thousands of poinsettias and wrapped a green garland up the wrought iron gates to the Castle. In almost every museum, there’s at least a hint of holiday cheer.

So what exactly can you expect to see if you’re out and about around the Smithsonian over the next couple weeks? Although the biggest attraction might be the new lion cubs on exhibit at the National Zoo, you may want to admire some of the trimmings adorning the museum halls. The Natural History Museum may take the cake this year, with four holiday trees, decorated with museum-appropriate ornaments, including crocheted coral and tropical fish to go along with the “Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef” exhibit. ”Typically, the decorations tie into natural history,” says horticulturist Monty Holmes of the Smithsonian Gardens. One of Natural History’s other trees has miniature owls and berries as decorations.

The Smithsonian Castle, in contrast, has gone the classic route, with a giant, glittering tree full of red, silver and gold ornaments (watch a team of Smithsonian horticulturists decorate the tree in fast motion below).

While it may be a bit too cold out to go see all these decorations yourself, we’ve compiled a gallery of festive photos taken by Smithsonian photographer Eric Long, so you can stay warm and cozy inside. From all of us here at ATM, we wish you a very happy holiday!

The first commercial Christmas card was sent in 1843 by Henry Cole, a philanthropist who wrote hundreds of cards by hand. Courtesy of Pushing the Envelope

Total Eclipse of the Moon—Early yesterday morning (or late Monday night for those on the west coast), an astronomical event took place that only happens once in a blue moon. Well, okay, it wasn’t a blue moon, but it was a total lunar eclipse. This was the first lunar eclipse to fall on the winter solstice since 1638. By the time this happens again in 2094, most of us will be long gone. The AirSpace blog has more information on how lunar eclipses form and what they look like in case you happened to miss out.

Christmas Sweater Archives—I have certainly seen some festive holiday sweaters around the Mall this winter; my personal favorite (worn by ATM’s own Beth Py-Lieberman!) featured chiming jingle bells, appliqued gingerbread men, Christmas trees and red bows. The Archives of American Art has done their own archival roundup of holiday knitwear donned by poets, painters and explorers.

Winter Wonderland—The Bigger Picture blog has a slideshow honoring the onslaught of cold the Washington area has received in recent weeks. The pictures are from the Smithsonian Institution Archives and include snowflake art, icy expeditions, and the Smithsonian covered in snow in the early 1900s. The post also has links to snowflake templates for cutting your own winter decorations.

Solstice—If you thought the weather here was cold, SIRIS has posted photos of Alaska Natives buckling down for the dead of winter from the archives of scientist Leuman M. Waugh, who visited the area in the early 20th century. The photos are likely to make you want a fur-lined winter parka to brave the icy chill. Another post on SIRIS shows images of winter landscape paintings from the National Art Inventories.

Birth of the Christmas Card—Pushing the Envelope has published a guest post by Skidmore College professor Catherine Golden that reveals the first Christmas card ever, from 1843. The card depicts a merry gathering of people eating and drinking, and reads, “A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year To You.” Read about the history of the holiday card, as well as Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, which Golden writes was arguably more popular for its philanthropic message than even the author’s expert prose.

Poinsettia Video—Recently, Around the Mall brought you the true story of the Poinsettia, which involved Joel Poinsett and his idea to create a national museum. Watch Monty Holmes, a horticulturist at Smithsonian Gardens, talk more about the history of this holiday plant.

From the moment the National Zoo’s seven lion cubs were born this fall, we’ve been waiting with great anticipation for the chance to meet them in person. We’ve seen them through their first physical exams and a swim test to make sure they can get across the moat in the Zoo yards. Recently, the first lion cub was named Aslan after the famous lion from C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia series. Finally, this weekend, the Zoo announced the names of the six other lion cubs and let the little superstars test out their habitat. Starting today, the cubs will be conditionally on exhibit for all to see (keepers will evaluate the weather and make a decision each day). To see them online, view our photo gallery of the cutest cubs in the Smithsonian (for now…)

The lion cubs make their debut. Credit: Mehgan Murphy, National Zoo

The names of Shera’s cubs, born August 31, are:

John: This cub was given the name John after John Berry, director of the National Zoo from 2006 to 2009. Berry was instrumental in bringing the cub’s mother Shera, her sister Nababiep and the father, Luke, to the Zoo in 2006.

Fahari (pronounced fa-HAH-ree): This name means “magnificent” in Swahili. It was chosen by the National Zoo advisory board because when she was first born, she had a ravenous appetite and was bigger than all the other cubs, even her brother. Though she no longer holds the distinction as being the biggest cub, keepers are sure she’ll keep her larger-than-life personality.

Zuri (ZUH-ree): It was only fitting for the Friends of the National Zoo board to name this cub Zuri, which means “beautiful” in Swahili. Zuri has the thickest, softest fur of all the cubs.

Lelie (la-LEE-ay): The first-grade classroom at Marshall Elementary School in Manassas, Virginia, won the video contest to name a cub, which we announced last month. Afrikaans for “lily.” The students chose it because lilies are a common flower at Kruger Park, the largest national park in South Africa and home to about 2,000 African lions.

The three cubs born to Nababiep on September 22 are named:

Baruti (ba-ROO-tee): The Bright Horizons daycare class in Arlington won the video contest with the best male name for a cub. The name is African and means “teacher.” Keepers described the lion as calm and quiet, so the class thought this to be fitting.

Aslan: On December 10, Georgie Henley and Skandar Keynes, actors in The Chronicles of Narnia movies, visited the Zoo and named him Aslan after the “Great Lion” in the series. Aslan is Turkish for “lion.”

Lusaka (lu-SAH-ka): Last January, the Zoo lost an 18-year-old lioness named Lusaka who held a special place in the hearts of her keepers as the matriarch of the lions. This cub was the only female of the bunch, so she was given the name Lusaka in memory of the late lioness.

Beginning today, zookeepers will decide on a daily basis whether or not to let the lion cubs roam their outdoor digs. This will depend primarily on the weather and on how well the cubs adjust to being out and about. Read updates from the Zoo’s lion keepers and check for news on the Zoo’s Twitter feed and Facebook page.

Pierre Huyghe is the ninth winner of American Art's Contemporary Artist Award. Still from "The Host and the Cloud," 2010. Courtesy of the American Art Museum and the Marian Goodman Gallery

Yesterday, the American Art Museum announced that French artist Pierre Huyghe is this year’s winner of the museum’s biennial Contemporary Artist Award. The $25,000 prize is awarded to a contemporary artist under the age of 50 who has already amassed a significant oeuvre and demonstrates great creativity and vision.

“Pierre Huyghe represents the commitment to creative innovation that this award seeks to recognize,” said the director of the museum Elizabeth Broun in a report. “Huyghe’s pioneering use of appropriated imagery and filmic reenactment reveal the power of mass media to shape our memory of personal and historical events.”

Huyghe is best known as a media artist who uses video and light installation to explore the boundary between fiction and reality in today’s society. One video work, “The Journey That Wasn’t,” showed footage from Huyghe’s search for an albino penguin in Antarctica. Of the work, Huyghe told PBS, “It’s called that because the journey happened… or did not. It was also kind of a mental journey, and maybe that’s the one I’m most interested in. The film is literally a process, a process of finding an idea and bringing it to light… We just invent fiction and we give ourselves the real means to discover it.”

“The Host and the Cloud,” pictured above, is a film shot at a closed museum on Halloween, Valentines Day and May Day. Characters such as the Grim Reaper and ET make random cameos as the video explores the relationship between their images and popular media.

One notable installation by Huyghe shown at the Tate Modern museum in London is a series of words in white light lettering that complete the phrase, “I don’t own” with “Tate Modern or the Death Star,” “Snow White,” or “Modern Times.” The words are punctuated by white doors in the middle of a white room. PBS’ Art 21 Web site has slideshows and more information on Huyghe’s work.

Huyghe was born in Paris in 1962 and attended the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs. His work has been shown around the world, with notable solo exhibitions at London’s Tate Modern in 2006, the Carpenter Center at Harvard University in 2004, the Guggenheim Museum in New York City in 2003, as well as the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, to name a few. He has won several awards, including a special award from the Venice Biennale jury in 2001. The artist is the ninth winner of the Contemporary Artist Award, formerly known as the Lucelia Artist Award, and was chosen from 15 other nominees by a panel of five judges from various museums and art institutions.

“I am thrilled that the jury has selected such an innovative and influential individual to receive the museum’s artist award,” said Joanna Marsh, curator of contemporary art at the museum. “Pierre Huyghe’s work expands traditional expectations of what art can be.”

Theo Eshetu's video installation, "Brave New World II," is on display at the African Art Museum. Photo courtesy of the African Art Museum.

A video artist born of mixed African-European descent, Theo Eshetu has spent his career presenting images of his global identity. His work, Brave New World II, is currently on display in the African Art Museum. The piece is a series of moving images that includes everything from cereal boxes to dance groups to planes taking off from the runway. The video is projected on a TV screen inside of a mirrored box set into the wall, which reflects the screen in the shape of a globe.

Eshetu is speaking tomorrow evening at 7 p.m. at the African Art museum. I caught up with him recently about finding artistic solutions to practical problems, technology, and his inspiration for doing art.

How did you get into video?

I was studying to become a photographer, and while studying I was in a communications course. I was interested in art, especially art with communication media, or media art. At the time, video was something very new, and it seemed to me that there was far more to discover in doing research in video than in photography.  Video was so new that one wasn’t quite sure what the art of video was. So I thought, well, that’s a good path to go on. I started making videos to discover what the art of video is, what can possibly make it an artform, and how I can use it as a medium of expression rather than of communication.

What is one of your favorite aspects of the video medium?

I think the most striking thing about video is the fact of its strong relationship with reality. Painting obviously has a certain distance from reality, photography is already quite a bit closer to reality, film is pretty close to reality, but somehow video and television seem to be able to show you reality. One starts asking oneself, what is reality? If this video image I’m seeing can represent reality, what is there in reality that’s worth inquiring or defining?

Another interesting thing is the fact that we all accept that television is a very influential medium and it influences our perception of the world. We know what’s fake and what’s real, but somehow it gives us an image of the world, how places are, how we are. Therefore, [I use] the same medium as television to create or construct an artistic message, a sort of personal reality rather than an institutional reality or a political reality. In the hands of an artist, [video] becomes something different, and you can have a different kind of reading of it. So that individual aspect I think is a very powerful thing.

How is your work about global identity?

I started making videos to use my own identity as a subject matter. In other words, my identity is made up of being of Ethiopian father, Dutch mother, born in London, live in Rome, so there’s a whole complicated network of cultures that are dialoguing with each other within my own being. An attempt to reproduce that is what most of my work seems to be about. It’s not really the work of an African artist or a European artist, but it’s really the work of what the world looks like when you in fact have different cultural influences within you.

I think that that vision of a world where different cultures are interacting with each other is something that is very relevant today, and its also characteristic of the medium of video and television. In other words, it’s a medium that can be broadcast via satellite, it can be relayed simultaneously in different continents in countries, and therefore somehow it has to communicate different things to different people around the world. It’s not an Italian film for an Italian audience that understands the Italian language. These are works that put into relationship the union, clashes or harmony between different cultures. Some videos, I do that in an explicit, specific way, and in other videos I do it in a more abstract, poetic way, and I would say Brave New World is a more abstract poetic approach.

How did you come up with the mirrored box piece of your work?

It really came about as a kind of a solution to a problem. I was invited to do an exhibition in a museum, and the budget was quite limited. The problem was how to create a new video work for an exhibition that was planned to be a very important exhibition here in Rome without having the possibility of doing a lot of filming, a lot of editing and at the same time not having many TV sets that I wanted originally to use to create a piece. So I had to come up with some kind of solution to do something that was quite stunning or attractive and at the same time I didn’t have the budget to do so.

It was basically just messing around in the bathroom, and looking at my bathroom mirror that I noticed that by moving the mirror of the medicine cabinet, it created a kind of interesting effect. So I thought, hey, what would happen if instead of just the light, there was a TV set, and instead of just mirrors on the sides there was also mirrors on the top and on the bottom. So it just sort of came about through trying to solve a problem and almost desperation for wanting to do something visually striking with something very simple.

One would have to be a genius to just have that idea. But if you just go through the process of thinking and doing and trying and making mistakes and trial and error, you come up with a solution that you wouldn’t have thought of.

How and where were the images recorded?

They were a collection of images that I had shot on Super 8 in my travels around the world. There’s no real logic to my editing. I chose the Super 8 images because I don’t generally want to celebrate the video as something technologically advanced that’s going to solve all our problems. I don’t believe in technological advancement as making better art. But I think that technology can be a useful tool, and therefore the idea of using Super 8 was to use old technology and yet do something cutting edge that seemed to be all digital but in fact it was done with old, super 8 technology. I like the fact that Super 8 evokes memory as well.

Kelly Church is known for interweaving pictures of her ancestors into her baskets. Photo courtesy of NMAI

Kelly Church (Grand Traverse band of Ottawa and Ojibwe) is a Michigan-based basket weaver who, along with Caddo potter Jereldine Redcorn, is currently visiting the National Museum of the American Indian for their Artist Leadership Program. She will be speaking today with Redcorn at 2 p.m. at NMAI.

Perhaps best known for making whimsical, red “strawberry” baskets, Church incorporates photos and copper sheeting harvested from the Great Lakes into the centuries-old basket patterns of her people.

One of her primary materials is the black ash tree, which is being terrorized by the emerald ash borer, an insect introduced to the Northeast United States from Asia that is predicted to destroy every black ash tree in Michigan within the next ten years. Church has committed herself to educating both her people and the greater public about the black ash. For the past couple weeks, she has been looking at black ash carvings in the museum’s collections to learn about other ways the black ash has been used by her people. She hopes to pass the information along before the black ash dies out completely.

Tell me about what brought you here to NMAI’s Artist Leadership Program.

This year, I’m doing a symposium, and it’s a follow up to a symposium I did in 2006, in which I invited all weavers and people of the Northeast in to learn about the emerald ash borer, which we first discovered it in Michigan in 2002. It will address the work that we’ve been doing collectively and individually in our own states on collecting seeds, working together to teach our children, where all communities are at different levels.

In Michigan, we’re perhaps some of the most traditional basket weavers in the Northeast. We take our kids into the forest when they’re first able to walk, and they’re out there and they’re learning how to identify their trees. Up in Maine, they have an economic-based system where they have a harvester who harvests for the community and they purchase [the ash trees] from him. They’re just beginning to teach their children how to identify the trees. So we’re all working together to document how to harvest, how to replant those seeds, what good basketry is, all of those things. Because what we’ve come to realize is that in Michigan, we’ve been [weaving baskets] continuously for thousands of years and we’re most likely going to have a whole generation that is missed if we do lose the ash trees as predicted.

When is the ash tree predicted to disappear?

It’s going to depend on which community you’re in. In my community we’re looking at… ten years would be wonderful, but that might be too optimistic. It really only takes the emerald ash borer three years to kill an entire ash stand, and emerald ash borer is all over the state. The whole state’s quarantined now.

We’ve been doing seed collections as tribal entities and sending them to a seed bank in Fort Collins, Colorado. They’ve been partnering with us to save our seeds for each tribe, and they will only let ancestors or tribal members come and pick those seeds back up; whomever we designate them for. They have a whole program in place, so that’s nice. I always tell people about seeds that I collect, I will save a third for my descendants, a third for my tribal people and a third for the state of Michigan. Because between those three entities, some [of the seeds] will be replanted.

Since you’ve been here in Washington, what have you found that you’re excited to share?

I came here last year, and what I did was focus on all the fibers of the Northeast that we used to use that we have already lost the tradition of using, which was weaving cattail mats and brush. I was trying to look at other things that we wove with in light of losing the black ash. What else could we bring back to the communities?

What kind of things did your people carve?

We carved pipes, we carved cradleboard, handles for baskets. The cradleboard specifically I was looking at because I knew we did it but I had never seen any in the collections, so I’ve been looking at a lot of those. They’ve also showed me arrows carved out of black ash, and utilitarian spoons. So there were all these wonderful things that I didn’t realize.

What do you focus on in your work?

I grew up in a basket weaving family, so I just thought everyone in the world wove baskets. So I thought, I’m going to be a painter, a photographer, a sculptor. And then when I started taking care of my grandfather, he had Alzheimer’s, every time someone would come drop off or help us, he’d say, “We need to make them a basket.” So I really got into the basketry and just kind of embraced it. So I’ve been pretty much a full-time basket weaver for the past decade, since I was caring for him. Right after I got back into it full-time is when the emerald ash borer came along in our state.

I weave when I can, but the meetings and education about this emerald ash borer is the number one priority. If we don’t educate people and collect seeds, we won’t have it in the future.

Why is basketry so important to Natives of the northeast?

It’s not really just a tradition of art, what we do. It’s really who we are as people of the Northeast. Creation stories are associated with black ash, there’s medicines made from black ash. That one little seed brings together family, it provides housing, it provides food. After that tree’s grown, everything that we do with those ash trees, it’s amazing to look at it in that bigger aspect.

Jereldine Redcorn is reviving her tribe's lost pottery tradition. Photo courtesy of NMAI

Jereldine Redcorn (Caddo/Potawatomi) is one of two American Indian artists currently visiting the National Museum of the American Indian as part of the Artist Leadership Program. The program brings indigenous artists to Washington, D.C. for two weeks to research the museum’s collections and to network and develop their careers. Redcorn has dedicated herself to reviving a lost pottery tradition of the Caddo people, an art that disappeared when the tribe was removed from the greater southern plains area (in today’s Louisiana and Arkansas) to Oklahoma in the early 19th century.

Caddo pottery dates to around 800 A.D. Made mostly from clay, the pots—which include both utilitarian cooking vessels and fine wares—are known for burnished, engraved and cross-hatched designs in spiral patterns.

Tomorrow at 2 p.m. at the museum, Redcorn will present on her art and culture along with Ottawa/Ojibwe artist Kelly Church, the other artist in the program (read my upcoming interview here tomorrow). I spoke with Redcorn about the day she learned that President Obama and the First Lady selected one of her pots for display in the White House. She also discussed her midlife career change and the importance of reviving this lost art.

What is the purpose of your work?

I’ve been making Caddo pottery for about 15 years. Actually, I’m reviving Caddo pottery. About five years ago I got to come to the Smithsonian to be part of an exhibit. I didn’t actually get to look at the collections, but this time I did. The Smithsonian purchased three of my pieces, and when the Obamas were doing their makeover, bringing new art in, they selected one. Now I can say it being calm. But I was so pleased on several levels, for myself, for my tribe, the Caddo, that a piece of [our pottery] is in the White House.

How did you find out?

It was just amazing. This lady from NMAI, Ann McMullen called me, and she explained to me that one of my pieces had been selected for display in the White House. I just wanted to jump and scream, I was so excited. I could not believe that this was happening. It was really great for Caddo pottery. The Southwest pottery [like that of the Navajo tribe] is so well known, and no one really knows about Caddo pottery. I have to explain, I have to educate, and though it’s a lot of fun, it’s really interesting how many people do not know how great our pottery was and how great our tradition was.

Were you a sculptor before that?

I was not an artist. I’m a math teacher, math and English. My plan was, I was going to make the pots, and my daughter, who was an artist, would put the designs on. She said, “You can do it, you just need to practice drawing.” I did, and it’s really amazing how something will happen if you practice. Actually, I should have known that as a teacher, because everyone has to learn multiplication. Kids will come in just scared to death of algebra, and I would say, “You can do it.” I think I just ran that record through my head, and said, “You can do this.”

I also had one lesson from an archaeologist. They were on an archaeological dig in Texas, but they were on the Oklahoma side. They asked our dance group to dance. I went down there, and they took us to a museum, and it was the first time I had seen Caddo pottery. I think I was 54.

You had no idea this existed?

Maybe somewhere in the back of my mind. But there was a man there with us, maybe 75 years old, who said, “I didn’t know we did this.” This pottery was so beautiful and so inspiring that I set out to revive it. I didn’t set out to revive it myself, but that’s just how it turned out. When I started, my tribe, the Caddo, would walk by, and they weren’t really interested. They are now, and that’s what’s so wonderful.

How was the tradition lost?

Unfortunately, we had been removed, like the Cherokees, the Trail of Tears. So other people knew about our pottery, but we didn’t. As we were pushed further and further by settlers, hunting and surviving was more important. But if we hadn’t been removed, I think we would’ve recognized this pottery and restarted it long ago.

What have you learned so far over the past couple weeks?

I spent a couple of days with the Caddo pottery, and then I went into Caddo clothing and drums and moccasins. And I began to see a relationship between all those designs. I think by the end, I will have grown so much as an artist.

Tomorrow, artists Jereldine Redcorn and Kelly Church will discuss their work at 2 p.m. at the American Indian Museum’s Resource Center, on the third level of the museum.

Schoolchildren eagerly greeted the Scarlet Knight when it arrived in Baiona, Spain. Photos courtesy of Rutgers University

One year ago this month, the RU 27, an eight-foot underwater glider, also called Scarlet Knight, completed a 221-day journey across the Atlantic Ocean. The torpedo-shaped, autonomous vehicle broke the record for the longest underwater trip by a glider in history. Last Thursday, the record-breaking glider was put on display for all to see in the Natural History Museum’s Sant Ocean Hall.

The story of Scarlet Knight begins with a challenge. In 2006, Dr. Richard Spinrad of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) met Rutgers University professors Scott Glen, Oscar Schofield and Josh Kohut at a workshop on international oceanic collaboration in Lithuania. Since 1998, the Rutgers team had been using gliders like Scarlet Knight to sample the salinity and temperature of the ocean in the coastal waters of Florida, Hawaii, New Jersey and the Mediterranean. The gliders were being employed for short distances of up to 30 miles. Spinrad, over a few bottles of wine, no less, posed a formidable challenge to the team—to send a glider all the way across the Atlantic.

The team accepted, and assembled a class of undergraduate students from a variety of disciplines to meet the challenge head-on. ”[The project] brought together engineers, computer scientists, oceanographers, as well as people who were just interested. They walked away with an appreciation of how important the ocean is, and I think that’s the really exciting part,” said Zdenka Willis of NOAA at Thursday’s unveiling.

The glider used the equivalent power of just three Christmas tree lights to undulate in a series of 10,000 continuous dives and ascents over a span of more than 4,500 miles. To dive, the glider would draw about one cup of water into its nose, causing it to sink forward. Once the glider slowed, it would spit out the water, propelling it forward in an upward motion.

Scarlet Knight’s journey started off in New Jersey on April 27, 2009, and ended in the town of Baiona, Spain, just north of the Portuguese border on the Atlantic coast. Its path loosely followed the route taken by Columbus’ ship, the Pinta, when it returned to Spain 517 years ago, immediately after the discovery of the New World. The Rutgers team collaborated with several Spanish schools and worked with the Spanish port authority. “This was a wonderful opportunity to participate in this adventure, this mission that epitomizes partnership,” says Enrique Alvarez Fanjul, of the Spanish port authority.

The underwater glider traveled 4,500 miles, collecting data along the way.

The glider didn’t go very fast. It traveled only about one mile per hour, but the Rutgers team didn’t have the need for speed. They were only interested in data-collection. “We’re pushing technology in the gliders to allow them to go deeper and further as well as pushing the edge on the technologies so we can look at everything from hurricane intensity forecasting to fisheries management to the general ecosystems, as well as that physical oceanography that’s really the bread and butter,” says Willis.

Most recently, autonomous gliders with similar technology were used to collect data at the Gulf oil spill cleanup.

Rutgers professor Scott Glenn, who spearheaded the project, sees the Scarlet Knight as an educational venture above all else. “I saw gliders as a new platform for exploring the ocean, something we’ve never been able to do before,” he says. “But the main purpose of this was educational. Yeah, we flew the glider across the ocean, but the main thing was we developed new education programs for our students.” The glider will be on display at the Natural History museum complete with photos, maps, and visuals in the Sant Ocean Hall through mid-2012.

These bottles are made from all-natural materials. Photo courtesy of Francois Azambourg and the Design Blog

Test Your Jazz Chops: Smithsonian Folkways just announced their forthcoming Jazz: The Smithsonian Anthology, which will be available beginning March 29. The collection features 111 songs on six CD’s that chronicle the history of jazz music, focusing on its most notable innovators and styles, from bebop to free jazz. Folkways is offering a quiz through Sporcle.com, where you can listen to samples of tracks and attempt to identify songs on the anthology. There is a shorter, 25-song version available, but in order to guess the full song list of all six discs, take the longer, 111-song quiz.

Crafty Cards: A few days ago, local artist Thalia Doukas facilitated a holiday card-making workshop at the Postal Museum. If you weren’t able to attend, Pushing the Envelope has posted some of her most salient tips on how to make some very worldly, one of a kind cards for the holidays using stamps as a primary decoration. There are also photos to get the imagination flowing.

Peanut Butter and Jellyfish: In Smithsonian’s 40th anniversary issue this past August, our colleague Abigail Tucker wrote about the proliferation of jellyfish in the earth’s oceans. The Ocean Portal blog recently explained why jellyfish populations are exploding, citing overfishing as a primary cause. Over 120 species of fish and over 30 other ocean-bound species feed on jellyfish, and if those populations are overfished, the jellyfish can get out of control. The blog suggests that if fish become a scarcity, we may indeed be stuck eating jellyfish instead.

Twenty-First Century Soda Bottle? Recently on the Cooper-Hewitt’s Design Blog, an unlikely combination of ingredients is being tested in an attempt to make a new, eco-friendly soda bottle. French designer Francois Azambourg is teaming up with Harvard professor of bioengineering Donald Ingber to test a mixture of sea fungus and sodium chloride bath as a possible substitute to the plastic that is accumulating in our oceans in piles like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The duo is using a sausage-making contraption to shape the bottles into a teardrop shape. Word is that the bottles are even healthy enough to eat—whether or not they’re tasty is, of course, another story.

The Smithsonian castle's Christmas tree is surrounded by a ring of poinsettias on the floor. Photo by Eric Long

It’s that time of year, and the Smithsonian Institution is leaving no corner undecorated for the holidays. Garlands spiral up the banisters of several Smithsonian museums, and Douglas fir trees tower inside the museum entrances. At the very least, almost every Smithsonian building has what is perhaps the most ubiquitous holiday decoration: the poinsettia.

According to Monty Holmes of the Smithsonian Gardens, the horticulture team has grown some 1,700 poinsettias this year. With so many of the plants under his care, Holmes began investigating the original connection between it and the holidays. Surprisingly, he discovered a little-known link between the poinsettia and the Smithsonian.

As it turns out, the red-leafed plant was introduced to the United States by botanist and statesman Joel Poinsett (1779-1851), who as the first U.S. Minister to Mexico found the plant while serving there. The poinsettia is said to have been used by the Aztecs as a red dye and to reduce fevers.

And what was its connection to the Smithsonian?

Poinsett was a founding member of the National Institution for the Promotion of Science, which formed in 1840 to promote the study of natural history and physical sciences, among other fields. It is thought that the organization was founded with the intention of securing the James Smithson bequest. (Although Smithson had never visited the United States, he left his estate of $508,318–about $15 million in today’s dollars–to establish in Washington, D.C. an institution for the “increase and diffusion of knowledge.”) At the time, much debate was going on about how best to achieve Smithson’s request.

When Poinsett was United States Secretary of War in 1838, he presided over the United States Exploring Expedition, the first circumnavigation of the globe sponsored by the United States.

Joel Poinsett first posed the idea of creating a national museum. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian Institution Archives

“He insisted when this global exploring expedition went out that it included scientists,” says Smithsonian historian Pamela Henson of Poinsett. “They collected geological, biological, anthropological specimens throughout the trip. They were called ‘scientifics.’”

The artifacts collected on that expedition were brought back to Washington, D.C. and put on display much like a modern-day museum exhibition at the Patent Office building (currently home to the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery). The exhibition was presided over by Poinsett’s National Institution. Poinsett was among dozens of who had strident convictions on how the money ought to be used; some thought it should be a library, others hoped it would support scientific research. But Poinsett was the first to argue that Smithson’s money should be used to create a national museum.

“He basically interjected the concept of creating a national museum into the debate surrounding what to do with Smithson’s money,” says Henson. “He never succeeded in getting the money [the Smithsonian was founded soon after in 1846 and the National Institution for the Promotion of Science promptly dissolved], but his push was what lead to the concept of the museum being part of the Smithsonian.”

As you peruse the halls of the Smithsonian Institution this Christmas, counting the poinsettias, remember Joel Poinsett, who planted the seed for the creation of a national museum.

The "Godmother of Punk" performs at a benefit for the Archives of American Art in 2008. Courtesy of the Archives of American Art

First Aircraft Moved to New Hangar: This week, AirSpace reports that the Curtiss SB2C Helldiver was the first aircraft to move into the Udvar-Hazy Center’s new Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar. Designed in 1938 and manufactured in 1942, the scout bomber flew in World War II. The Air and Space Museum’s plane is one of only a handful still in existence. The plane is scheduled to be restored over the course of the coming year, along with several other aircraft that will soon move into the new hangar. Later in 2011, the mezzanine level of the hangar will open so that visitors can see the aircraft refurbishment in action.

Patti Smith Wins National Book Award: Singer Patti Smith, perhaps best known as the “Godmother of Punk,” just won the National Book Award for her memoir, Just Kids, which chronicles her friendship with photographer and artist Robert Mapplethorpe. The Archives of American Art blog has a sound clip of Smith reading at a 2008 benefit, or your can hear her on NPR.

Twain Galore: It seems that in addition to Around the Mall’s post honoring Mark Twain’s would-be 175th birthday, a couple other blogs around the Smithsonian have paid their own tributes to the 19th century American author. Face to Face has posted some of their favorite Twain quotes as well as Edwin Larson’s 1935 portrait of the writer. The Smithsonian Libraries blog has a list of further reading straight from the Smithsonian’s collections.

Flamingo-Keeping: Now on the Smithsonian Science homepage, a video from the National Zoo features footage of the Zoo’s 61-bird flock of flaming pink Caribbean flamingos. Sara Hallager, flamingo keeper, says the birds are extraordinarily social animals (their squawks can be heard in the background). She discusses how she and the other keepers prevent inbred chicks during mating season by putting different colored bands on the flamingos’ feet to keep track of who’s who.

National Museum of “Dad-Trolling”? The web comic XKCD has proposed a new Smithsonian museum that specializes in enabling fathers to tell little white lies to their children. Click on various parts of the museum’s floorplan and see what waits inside the “Hall of Misunderstood Science,” “Regrettable Pranks: An Interactive Experience” or the “Rotunda of Uncomfortable Topics,” among others.

Faith Mitchell will be speaking about her book, Hoodoo Medicine, this Saturday at the Anacostia Community Museum.

Medical anthropologist Dr. Faith Mitchell will be speaking at 1 PM this Saturday at the Anacostia Community Museum, in conjuction with the museum’s current exhibit, “Word, Shout, Song: Lorenzo Down Turner Connecting Communities Through Language,” Mitchell, currently Vice President of Grantmakers in Health, a medical aid organization, spent time in the Sea Islands researching the herbal remedies of the Gullah people. On Saturday, Mitchell will discuss some of the medicinal plants she learned about, how they’re used and how they became integrated into the culture of the South Carolina Sea Islands. I spoke with Mitchell about her research.

Why is there such a strong  herbal tradition among the Gullah?

I think it’s because of the history of those islands. Because first the slave population and then the black population was so [large] that they retained the use of traditional medicines, even when other parts of the South stopped using them as much. Also, because they were so isolated from doctors and hospitals, it kind of reinforced the use of the medicine there so that comparing the Sea Islands with some other parts of the South, it wouldn’t necessarily be that the plants were different, but the tradition was stronger.

What are a couple remedies that you found to be most interesting?

Elderberry. It’s something that the Gullah use in the Sea Islands, but it’s also used by the Native Americans, and it’s also used in Europe. People use it for different things, which I think, just in terms of the botanical issues is always interesting. First of all, how do people even notice that plants are medicinal, and then the fact that they use them for different things, you kind of wonder, well how did they decide what they were going to use it for? In the Sea Islands, they use elderberry for sores, which you could imagine would be pretty common with people who are agricultural, whereas the Native Americans used elderberry as a pain killer. In Europe, they used it for wounds, but also for colds and also as a laxative. So a lot of different uses, but a good plant.

How do the Gullah use these plants?

Boil it and make it into a tea. Depending on the plant they would use different parts, the flower or the leaves, the bark or the root, but they usually do make it into a tea.

Did you test any of these Gullah herbal remedies?

I tested a few, you know a lot of them don’t taste that good, which is considered to be part of the effectiveness. If it’s bitter then it’s [supposed to be] better for  you.

What does the word “Hoodoo” mean in your book?

Along with these herbal medicines, there’s also a tradition of magical medicines that would be called voodoo in Louisiana, and actually the term “hoodoo” that is used in the title of my book is often used to refer to magic by the Gullah people and other parts of the South. So that was also something I was interested in. But it was much harder to find out about. Because even though people practice it, they don’t want to talk about it. Sometimes, the same people who are specialists in herbal medicine are also specialists in magical medicine, even though you have to find that out from somebody else.

The substances people use are really different. For magic, people use stuff like black cat bones, graveyard dust, fingernail clippings. That tradition really comes from West Africa. People will sell you stuff and they’ll say it’s black cat bone, but you don’t really know if it is or it isn’t, and in a sense you don’t really know if it’s working or not. It’s a very different frame of reference from a tea you’re drinking for a sore throat, and you can tell yourself whether it works. People use magic to change their luck, to get somebody to fall in love with them. So that tradition is there too.

I would have these indirect conversations with people. They would say, “Well, I don’t know anybody who does that stuff, and I don’t know what they use, but I hear that when you get hexed, you feel like there’s mice running up and down your skin, or you get bumps all over.” So I’d hear about it that way.

"Toussaint Louverture and the Elderly Slave," by Ousmane Sow, was made from mixed media by Senegalese artist Ousmane Sow. Courtesy of the African Art Museum

The African Art Museum’s new exhibit, “African Mosaic,” surveys works collected within the past ten years. The exhibit features more than 100 objects—everything from gold jewelry to ivory carvings to contemporary artworks.

“This particular opening really captures who we are, what this museum is about, and the extent of the diversity and dynamism of African art centered around a decade of collecting,” said the museum’s director Johnnetta Cole at a media preview last week.

One work in the exhibit is a standout, according to Cole, who says Ousmane Sow’s sculpture of Haiti’s liberator, Toussaint Louverture is sure to become a “destination work.”  Just as Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” is to the Louvre Museum in Paris, Cole says the piece is certain to become the museum’s must-see icon.

The work, a larger than life sculpture called “Toussaint Louverture and the Elderly Slave” by Sow, a Senegalese artist, towers at the entrance to the exhibit. Louverture (1743-1804) was a Haitian slave who led the Haitian uprising against French colonial rule around the turn of the 18th century. He is widely considered the great liberator of the Haitian people.

Sow, who moved from Senegal to Paris as a young man, created the sculpture in 1989 as part of a three-work series to commemorate the bicentennial of the French Revolution. Each work in the series depicts a hero to liberty, some are French and others, such as the Louverture are colonial subjects who rebelled against the French.

Sow uses a special material to make his sculptures, a mixture of natural fibers and clay. He tends the material every day, keeping it fresh and malleable, even if he doesn’t work on his art at all.

Sow, who was present at the media preview, had not seen the work for 20 years, and said (in French, through a translator) that it was an emotional experience to see the piece once again. He said he felt that the work had, after two decades, finally found its true home.

“African Mosaic” is now on view through 2011 at the African Art Museum.