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Note: If you’re going to be around the Mall this weekend, watch out for a handful of road closures between Saturday and Sunday due to the Japanese Street Festival, the National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade and Race to Stop the Silence. See these events’ websites for details. 

Friday, April 12: Experimental Film from Korea

Instead sitting down to another conventional Friday night popcorn flick, how about tackling some of the past few years’ most inventive short films? Fresh from the Experimental Film and Video Festival in Seoul, North Korea, a selection of unique and groundbreaking works will be introduced in person by Park Donghyun, the festival’s director, this evening at the Freer Gallery. The batch of films explores the experience of time, tensions between North and South Korea and the sibilant character [ ∫ ]. The showing is part of the 2013 Korean Film Festival. Free. 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Freer Gallery.

Saturday, April 13: Super Science Saturday: How Things Fly

Think you’re an expert on flight? Seen everything the Air and Space Museum has to offer? Then take a trip out to the Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles Airport, where thousands of aviation and space artifacts that take up too much room to be exhibited on the Mall are on display. On the second Saturday of each month (that’s today!), the museum holds demonstrations and hands-on activities that teach visitors about aviation and space exploration. Free. 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Air and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center.

Sunday, April 14: Nam June Paik: Art & Process

Nam June Paik (1932-2006) was an avant-garde musician, installation master and the world’s first video artist. The American Art Museum opened a retrospective of his career earlier this year (see some of his work at his website), and today five of the most prominent scholars and artists who studied and worked with him are coming together in a symposium to discuss his legacy. After a subsequent gallery talk and break, prominent composers who knew Paik will premiere a performance of his film and music. Free tickets distributed beginning at 12:30 p.m. for the symposium and concert, and again at 6:30 p.m. for the concert. Symposium: 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Gallery Talk: 4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Concert: 7 p.m. American Art Museum.

And all weekend: Cherry Blossoms!

It’s the prettiest time of the year in DC, and there are many around the Mall this weekend to celebrate the city’s favorite flowers as they hit their peak. After you enjoy the National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade and Japanese Street Festival on Saturday, head over to the Sackler Gallery to check out National Cherry Blossom Festival Anime Marathon, a showing of all 26 episodes of Shinichiro Watanabe’s landmark animated television series Samurai Champloo. And if you want a sneak peak at the beautiful scenery down by the water, take a look at our new slideshow of the cherry blossoms in all their glory!

 

 

Also, check out our Visitors Guide App. Get the most out of your trip to Washington, D.C. and the National Mall with this selection of custom-built tours, based on your available time and passions. From the editors of Smithsonian magazine, the app is packed with handy navigational tools, maps, museum floor plans and museum information including ‘Greatest Hits’ for each Smithsonian museum.

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

In honor of its exhibit opening April 12, the Air and Space museum hosted journalists and social media friends for a behind-the-scenes tour of the exhibit. From early navigation at sea and skies and to outer-space and back again, the exhibit spans hundreds of years of technological change.

Update: Oops! Apparently, we got something wrong here, folks. You can visit the tarantula and you can watch the creature eat, but you can’t hold it in your hand. Sorry about that.

Tuesday, April 9: Live Tarantula Feeding

Ever held a tarantula in your hand? How about watched one chomp on crickets? Stop by the Insect Zoo today during their feeding demonstration and get up close and personal with one of the creepy crawlers, which can be touched and held. Not an event for the timid! Free. Year-round from Tuesday to Friday at 10:30 a.m., 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., and on Saturday and Sunday at 11:30 a.m., 12:30 p.m. and 1:30 p.m. Natural History Museum.

Wednesday, April 10: Public Observatory Project

Here’s something more exciting to look at than your computer screen on your lunch break today: moon craters and sun spots! The Air and Space Museum opens its observatory to the public on Wednesdays, which means visitors have access to a 16-inch telescope to survey the cosmos. Astronomy educators are on hand to guide visitors in their observations, and the observatory’s Discovery Station has other interactive activities that teach more about astronomy and telescopes. Free. 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. Air and Space Museum.

Thursday, April 11: Almayer’s Folly

Sometimes we get so caught up in our goals that we lose sight of why we’re pursuing them. That’s one of the dangers explored in Almayer’s Folly, a 2012 film by Chantal Akerman on view this evening about a French expatriate in search of pirate treasure in Malaysia as he tries to manage his beautiful, mentally unstable daughter. In French and Khmer with English subtitles. Free. 8 p.m. Hirshhorn Museum.

 

Also, check out our Visitors Guide App. Get the most out of your trip to Washington, D.C. and the National Mall with this selection of custom-built tours, based on your available time and passions. From the editors of Smithsonian magazine, the app is packed with handy navigational tools, maps, museum floor plans and museum information including ‘Greatest Hits’ for each Smithsonian museum.

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

Nearly 30 years ago, moviegoers got an unprecedented look into the lives of the space shuttle astronauts orbiting 280 miles above the Earth. And they witnessed it in extraordinary dimensions—on a five story-tall screen in booming surround sound.

The Dream Is Alive pulled back the curtain on NASA’s Space Shuttle program, giving the public an intimate glimpse into the previously unfamiliar lives of its members. Directed by IMAX co-inventor Graeme Ferguson and narrated by Walter Cronkite, the IMAX classic showed astronauts in full garb, practicing how to move in weightless conditions, using a water tank on land. Once in space, the film revealed the crew’s reactions to watching the world turn as the orbiter circled the Earth at 17,000 miles an hour. It followed the men and women as they worked, ate, exercised and even slept in zero gravity.

“Astronauts have said it’s the next best thing to being there,” says Valerie Neal, the space shuttle curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, of the film that was originally released in 1985. “The theater kind of dissolves and you feel like a part of the film. I had this sense that I was in space with them.”

Shot by 14 NASA astronauts during three shuttle missions, the film includes footage of Discovery‘s 1984 launch and landing, as well as the deployment of several satellites from the spacecraft. It features sweeping panoramas of the Earth, space walks and risky satellite repairs. It puts the audience in the driver’s seat with video filmed from the astronauts’ points of view while training on land—viewers feel as if they are parachuting to the ground, or lurching away from the shuttle in high-speed emergency baskets.

The film premiered during an optimistic time for space exploration—1984 saw nine shuttle missions, seven more than in the program’s first year in 1981. More than 100 missions would launch into space in the next three decades before the program folded in 2011. The Dream Is Alive represented the country’s drive to make space transportation routine. It also introduced the public to a new era of American astronauts, Neal says, one that included women and individuals from more diverse backgrounds.

“That was something of a revelation, and I think it probably played a role in widespread acceptance that this is the way spaceflight should be,” she says. “It shouldn’t be just the cream of the crop of the most elite military jet test pilots, but also people who are scientists and engineers who could be our next door neighbors.”

In the film viewers saw Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, hover in midair while working with her fellow Challenger crew members. Kathy Sullivan joins her, marking the first time two women flew together on a shuttle mission. We watch Sullivan become the first American woman to walk in space as she waves to the camera from outside the window, the white and blue of the Earth swirling behind her. We see Judith Resnik, the first Jewish woman in space, working in weightlessness. To date, more than 50 American women have become NASA astronauts.

The Dream Is Alive was still playing in theaters when Challenger exploded seconds after its 10th launch in January 1986, killing all seven astronauts onboard, including Resnik. The tragedy illuminated the very real dangers of space travel, an aspect of the shuttle program that The Dream hadn’t explored. But Neal says the United States soon saw a surge of public support for the program, suggesting the golden age of American space exploration was not yet over.

“The American public had a sense that the space program was valuable and shouldn’t be halted,” she says.

Now, another generation of space enthusiasts can experience the zenith of the shuttle program, this time on an 86-by-62 foot silver screen. The Dream Is Alive is now showing in the Airbus IMAX Theater in the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. Showtimes and ticket information is available here.

The film temporarily joins two of its stars at the Smithsonian. One of the cameras used in the film, which went on to document missions until 1998, arrived at the Institution last April and will soon be installed at the Air and Space Museum’s “Moving Beyond Earth” exhibition. The black camera, which weighs about 80 pounds, shot film with over-sized, 70mm frames, providing more than eight times the area of traditional 35mm film. Such capacity lent to never-seen-before, wide-angle views of the planet’s topography. The space shuttle Discovery landed at the museum shortly after. The famed spacecraft spent 365 days in space during its 27-year career. It flew 39 missions, several of which are chronicled in the film, before it was retired in 2011.

Though you might not know it judging from the forecast most places, spring has indeed arrived. And despite the unpredictable D.C. weather, the snow, sleet, cold rain and wind hasn’t kept the tourists away. Crowds are gathering in the nation’s capital for the first glimpses of the cherry blossoms. For those of you interested in making the most of your visit, the editors over here have released two new spring-themed tours to help showcase the seasonal delights both inside and outside along the Mall.

The Gardens tour will take you to our many well-maintained plots around the Mall to see more than just a few pink blooms by the Tidal Basin, including heirloom plants, geometric splendors reminiscent of the grandest of European gardens and even a Victory Garden.

Meanwhile, our Spring Fling tour will take you inside to show off the riches of the Smithsonian’s arts and sciences collection and celebrate the season with baseball legends, a tree you can wish on, bouquets in paint and even a spring from space.

Head here to download the visitor’s app and get your step-by-step directions, custom postcard feature and greatest hits from the museums.