Museum goers might be stumped for a minute by an old-fashioned word in the title of a new show, “Ballyhoo! Posters as Portraiture,” opening Friday at the National Portrait Gallery.

Ballyhoo?

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d used it in a sentence and wasn’t entirely sure what it meant. Here, for the uninformed is a definition, by way of a few of its synonyms: advertising, promotion, marketing, propaganda, push, puffery, buildup, boosting, fuss, excitement, informal hype, spiel, hullabaloo, splash. Packs some punch, doesn’t it?

Wendy Wick Reaves, the show’s curator says it has its origin in 19th-century circus rhetoric, “flamboyant hucksterism” (hmm, hucksterism, use that word in your next text message). Still not sure, though, I keyed the word into ProQuest, my favorite online database of old newspapers. Scribe Henry E. Dixey of The Chicago Daily Tribune reached across the decades and clued me in. His 1909 treatise follows:

It was the custom of dime museum proprietors to station in front of the ‘palatial palaces of public pleasure’ a leather lunged person who lied in a loud voice about the museum’s attractions, seeking to induce the passers-by to purchase tickets for the extraordinary exhibition within. This man’s speech was called a “ballyhoo.” The species is not yet extinct—he stands in front of animal shows, merry-go-rounds, loop-the-loops, midget cities, dime museums, and other art centers, with a small cane, a big black cigar, stripped clothes and a brassy voice, guffawing the glory of his wares to the chin-whiskered public who ’stop! pause! and consider!’ the ferocious falsehoods with which he beguiles them.  

So, ballyhoo, or promotion, became the stuff of posters—graphic works used in advertising and marketing, wartime propaganda, presidential campaigns, protest movements and film and music promotion. Check out the ballyhoo in a poster about Thomas Edison’s phonograph. “It Talks! It Sings! It Laughs! It Plays Cornet Songs.”

The museum’s show emphasizes the portraits—of Buffalo Bill Cody, Buster Keaton, Greta Garbo, even Johnny Depp—in 60 posters from its collection. It’s a graphic feast. Huge, boisterous type sprawls across exhibition walls. Curator Reaves says the poster aesthetic is “fun, vivid.”

And that ain’t no ballyhoo.

(Photograph courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery: Thomas Alva Edison by Alfred S. Seer Engraver; Copy after: Mathew B. Brady, Color woodcut poster, c. 1878.)

Lectures offered around the Smithsonian tend to bear titles that range from the curiously vague (“Children at Play: An American History”) to the esoterically detailed (“Topics in Museum Conservation Lecture: Hygric Swelling of Stone”). So when a talk came up on “Protective Ornaments: Dressed for Defense” my editor sent me the details, with her own comic, free association:

 “She narrowly escaped harm, when the bullet bounced off her 14-carat diamond.”

With that in mind, I headed over to the lecture, with visions of fiercely militarized gemstones mounted in sharply pronged settings already occupying my thoughts.  And I wasn’t disappointed. Suzanne Ramljak, an art historian and editor of Metalsmith magazine took to a podium at Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery.

Was she suggesting, I wondered, that some latent warrior girl lurks within us when a woman utters the words: “I would just die for that necklace,” or “I can’t live without those earrings”?  Jewelry is not usually considered a life or death matter, she said.

But delving into a photographic survey of historical protective ornaments–think armament like chain mail, helmets, and brass knuckles–spanning from the Stone Age to present day, it was clear that a case could be made that medieval protective gear could be considered a long lost cousin of today’s glitz.  “Not just as accessories, but necessities,” she said.

Early stone necklaces, bracelets and anklets apparently served as a line of defense against animals, prone to attacking appendages. Jewelry adorned with claws and teeth and ornate helmets depicting the heads of ferocious creatures were donned so that their wearers inherited bestial characteristics. Today, people can be found safeguarding themselves with spiritual or superstitious charms like St. Christopher medals and four-leaf clovers.

Ramljak even noted some extreme examples of of “jewelry”–the ankle bracelet-cum-honing-device Martha Stewart wore when under house arrest and a locket designed to hold a potassium iodide pill to be taken in the case of nuclear disaster. 

Check out the defensive and protective possibilities of the jewelry shown in the exhibition, “Ornament as Art: Avant-Garde Jewelry from the Helen Drutt Collection,” on view at the Renwick Gallery through July 6.

(Photographs courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery.  Esther Knobel, Israeli, born Poland, 1949, “Warrior (Macabi) Brooch,” 1984, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston: Helen Williams Drutt Collection, © Esther Knobel. Claus Bury, German, born 1946, ”Ring,” 1970, White and yellow gold, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Helen Williams Drutt Collection, © Claus Bury.) 

Herblock was not fond of Ronald Reagan.

In fact, the three-time Pulitzer prize-winning political cartoonist judged the “great communicator” rather harshly. In a 1984 portrayal, the 40th President of the United States is transformed into a television pitchman selling America an alternate reality—through the looking glass.

It was a rare president that escaped the wrath of Herblock’s pen and pad—weapons that the cartoonist said kicked the “big boys who kick the underdogs.”

On Tuesday, historian Sidney Hart of the National Portrait Gallery led a sneak peak preview of the Herblock exhibit entitled “Puncturing Pomposity,” which opens on May 2. The 40 cartoons span Herbert Lawrence Block’ s seven-decade career, which included 55 years at The Washington Post. He continued his artful commentary right up until shortly before his death in 2001 at age 91.

Hart said that both Nixon and Eisenhower, enraged by Herblock’s cartoons, canceled their subscriptions to the Post. Nixon claimed he didn’t want his daughters to be upset by the frequent skewering he endured and was even rumored to have started shaving twice daily because of the dark 5 o’clock shadow the cartoonist always gave him.

And while Herblock’s work usually had a liberal bent, the Democrats were granted no immunity. At the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, a 1998 rendering shows William Jefferson Clinton, his head held high as he wades ankle deep in the thick mud. 

It’s a treat to get an up close look at the original cartoons, which were culled from the archives of the 14,000 pieces the Herb Block Foundation donated to the Library of Congress. The thick black lines of his ink pen on the large drawings stand out sharply. It’s fascinating to examine the places where Herblock pasted a scrap of paper over a phrase, and rewrote a caption.

While the span of Herblock’s cartoons dates from New Deal to Great Society to Watergate, Hart said an election year was a good time for an exhibition to focus on the principles of poking fun at the presidency. A cautionary tale, so to speak,  for the three hopeful candidates. What does the next generation of pen and ink critics have in store for them?

The exhibition makes also for irreverent contrast, housed in the hall adjacent to the museum’s stately collection of presidential portraits. Or as Martin Sullivan, the portrait gallery’s new director, puts it with understated elegance: Herblock lets us “explore the presidency in other dimensions.”

(”Through the looking glass” (Ronald Reagan); By Herblock; Pencil on paper; Published July 3, 1984 by the Washington Post; Herbert L. Block Collection, Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, © The Herb Block Foundation

“This State of the President” (Bill Clinton); By Herblock; Pencil on paper; Published January 22, 1998, by the Washington Post; Herbert L. Block Collection, Prints Photographs Division, Library of Congress, © The Herb Block Foundation)

The Smithsonian American Art Museum’s film noir series commenced last Wednesday with a screening of Billy Wilder’ s pitch-perfect 1950 Hollywood satire, Sunset Boulevard. The crowds stayed away, but all six of us movie mavens in attendance were enthusiastically glued to the screen.

After all, we were grateful because these cinematic artworks demand to be seen on the big screen. And while, yes, the DVD market has been very good to old movies and the people who love them, the small screen diminishes their power.

Besides, film noir’s  violence and moral corruption are as relevant today as they were in the 1940s and 50s. (That is, unless I’m totally mistaken and the world has been on one whopping acid trip of optimism in recent years). There’s no “happily ever after” in these cynical tales. Sunset Boulevard takes jabs at everything from the studio system to the downfall of the great silent cinema stars.

During Hollywood’s era of the morally righteous Hays Code days, stories had to be told with great subtlety—sex and violence were implied but infrequently seen. The viewer had to do the guesswork.  Wild flights of imagination fill in the gaps as to what’s happening off a screen sanitized by the strict requirements. Thus, certain “mundane” actions—a furtive glance or a brief kiss—become endowed with powerful meaning so that a stagy gunshot has the impact of canon-blast. In Boulevard, aging actress Norma Desmond, played by Gloria Swanson, entices starving screenwriter William Holden’s Joe Gillis to live with her. Their onscreen token embrace and kiss are all we viewers need to establish her sugar-mamma intent of hot seduction. 

This is partly why noir is so much fun to watch. Sorry, Tarrantino.

Then there’s the photography, which begs one to reconsider the aesthetic potential of Venetian blinds. Rooted in German Expressionism, the film noir environment is surreal with its low angles and ominous shadows that allude to the characters’ sinister psychologies. Yes, the protagonists are morally reprehensible, but they look fantastic—who cares about the horrible things that they do?

 (The film noir series is free to the public and continues with “Double Indemnity,” which needs to be seen if only for Barbara Stanwyck’s bathrobe-clad entrance (May 7); and lastly, Bogie and Bacall in the 1946 cut of  ”The Big Sleep” (May 21).  Image: 42nd St.Nocturne by Xavier Ja. Barile, courtesy of SAAM.)

One morning still in a sleep-induced fog, I venture over to the Hirshhorn Museum.

There, I spiral into yet another dream sequence. Sheep, passing by in a herd, beg to be counted and the sight of a man’s chest rising and falling as he sleeps lulls me into synchronizing my own breath with his. Suddenly, I’m barreling around mountains in a train that’s passing through tunnels.

Or are those blackouts just my heavy eyelids blinking? I wouldn’t doubt it. Someone’s rattling in a dull monotone from Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past in the background, and not the part about the madeleine. That part I liked.

Next, I’m off the train and walking through a beam of light bursting through a smoky haze. Yikes! Two men are wrestling in the nude.

And, now, a weird creature with the head of David Bowie and the body of a doll appears. Really?

Bowie’s spouting off orders, but I don’t stick around to find out why because King Kong’s Fay Wray is in one of her screaming fits. She’s convulsing as if she’s being exorcised.

Not long after Wray’s screams fade, I’m hopping through some colorful video game world listening to soundtracks of birds chirping and water rushing. I follow a crowd to a light at the end of a tunnel, ride an escalator down a floor, pass through a revolving door and I’m spit out onto the sidewalk.

Was it all a dream? No. It was the museum’s exhibition “The Cinema Effect: Dreams”—a dark labyrinth of 20 film installations that plays out like a highbrow haunted house, and mentally jars my perception of fact and fiction, and dream and reality.

Now my life seems more fiction than fact, a film in the making. Could that street vendor and those guys unloading the truck be part of the plot? I was putty in the curators’ hands, one of whom said, “The cinematic is in the way we perceive the world, in the way we speak, in the way we dream.”

The exhibit is open through May 11.(Still from Tony Oursler’s Switch, 1996. Image courtesy the artist. Still from Steve McQueen’s Bear, 1993, from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden’s collection. Image courtesy the artist. Still from Christoph Girardet’s, Release, 1996, from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden’s collection. Image courtesy the artist. Still from Stan Douglas’s, Overture, 1986. Image courtesy David Zwirner, New York. Still from Michael Bell-Smith’s Up and Away, 2006, from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden’s collection. Image courtesy the artist and Foxy Production, New York.)

Taught to avoid sloth? Meet 9-year-old Khali (right), a female sloth bear that came from the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle to become a non-breeding companion for the National Zoo’s 26-year-old male sloth bear Merlin. Sloth bears are slow-movers, thus their association with laziness or slothfulness, one of the seven-deadly sins. But the sloth bear is no lazy creature, the animals sport a slightly longer snout than other species of bear, and they industriously use it along with their lips to create a vacuum-like seal to suck up insects from holes, cracks and crevices.Khali arrived from Seattle late last year, but has only recently joined Merlin following gradual introductions between the pair. Sloth bears, found in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka, are listed as vulnerable by the World Conservation Union, although there is no solid estimate of how many remain in the wild. In India, where many sloth bears are found, their numbers are declining mainly due to habitat loss, poaching and the use of the animals for an illegal practice known as “bear dancing.”In addition to Khali and Merlin, the National Zoo is also home to two other sloth bears, 13-year-old Hana, and her two-year-old cub, Balawat.(Photograph courtesy of Mehgan Murphy, The National Zoo)

Back in the early 20th century, long before computers or telephones were standard, postcards were like e-mail. The letter carrier stopped by three or four times each day and postcards were cheap, costing a mere penny to mail. You could send a card in the morning to a friend across the city to set up a date that night. It would arrive around noon, and your friend still had time to confirm before dinner.

Businesses learned that postcards were an easy way to advertise, and might print up thousands, says Jerry McCoy, a D.C. deltiologist (postcard enthusiast). Last week at the Smithsonian’s Postal Museum, McCoy, who works at the Washington, D.C. library’s Washingtoniana division, gave a presentation on what he calls “hometown Washington” postcards.

These old cards go beyond Washington’s iconic monuments, and leave a legacy of businesses, shops and restaurants of a bygone era. They “illustrate how much of our city has grown, changed and disappeared over the last century,” he says.

They’re also important historical documents. “Researchers almost never think of postcards as sources of visual information,” McCoy says. “But often the only place you can find photos of a business is on a postcard.”

For example, check out this postcard from the Casino Royal, a Chinese restaurant and hot night spot in the 1950s. On the back, comedian Cal Claude scribbled a message about his performance there with Nat King Cole in 1955.

McCoy visits the sites of his favorite postcards years later. By the 1980s, the Casino Royal was an adult entertainment theater and was heavily damaged in a 1985 fire.

The “Palais Royal” card, promoting a “dry goods and fancy goods” department store downtown, dates from 1907. McCoy says the original building was demolished in the 1990s, he visited the site to find an office building that copied the arched entrances of the Palais Royal.

McCoy searches eBay every day, easily spending $60 or $70 for a coveted card. But he says deltiology is more than a quirky hobby. “I’m buying history, buying back a piece of hometown D.C.”

(Photos courtesy of Jerry McCoy.)

Everyone knows that creating a quality product requires polling your audience. So in hearing that the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum has teamed up with the New York City Department of Transportation, Google and Transportation Alternatives in a competition to design a bike rack for New York City, I—an urban biker myself—have a thing or two to say.

The ideal bike rack would be a flashy piece of street furniture, like London’s telephone booths, so you could spot it on the fly. It would have a slot for each bike to avoid one falling and causing a domino effect, and it would be made of a padded (but waterproof) material so that it’s not metal on metal for shiny, new bikes.

But it’s one thing to think it. Up to ten finalists in the CityRacks Design Competition will have to execute it, building a prototype with a $5,000 stipend.

The prototypes will be previewed at Cooper-Hewitt this fall and then installed in the city for a trial period. The first place winner will take away a $5,000 cash prize and have his or her rack implemented throughout New York City. So bikers, play informant for your architect, designer or engineer friends and all you biking architects out there get busy. Registration ends April 30.

So with bike lanes painted and now parking solutions underway, I guess cyclists are left to deal with the ever-so-threatening car door.

It started back in January, when the Comedy Central satirist met with Glass and lobbied him to include a portrait of Colbert in the “Treasures of American History” exhibition, alongside Abraham Lincoln’s hat and Irving Berlin’s piano.

Glass rejected the portrait, so Colbert trudged across town to the National Portrait Gallery. That museum accepted the painting and hung it next to the bathrooms where it remained until yesterday, April Fool’s Day.

It was a hit, and crowds streamed in and lined up to snap pictures with their cell phones. Last night on the Stephen Colbert show, Brent Glass phoned in his decision, announcing that Colbert’s portrait will now be transferred to the American History Museum’s exhibit at the Air and Space museum for the next two weeks.

So a master kite builder, I am not. I found that much out at the 42nd Annual Smithsonian Kite Festival this past Saturday.

Smithsonian magazine intern Kenny Fletcher and I created and entered a standard two-stick, diamond-shaped flyer in the festival’s homemade kite competition. We built it out of magazine covers, dowels, string and a not-so-buoyant amount of tape. The covers were probably a bit heavier than ideal, but we had to represent.

Kenny consulted some Web sites—one of which advertised step-by-step instructions for building a kite like Benjamin Franklin’s. We employed techniques that we thought would better the functionality of our modest kite: tying the dowels in the shape of a cross; notching grooves in the ends to hold a string that created the frame’s border; and inserting a rubber band in the string to act as a shock absorber in case of strong winds.

It looked impressive. That is, until we went outside for a test flight the day before the competition.

The picture (above) is quite gracious, a real test of reflexes for photographer and assistant editor Amanda Bensen given that the kite was airborne for a matter of seconds. Multiple attempts were made and each time the kite would spiral erratically and then nose dive. We thought, should we snip these strings? Or weight the tail with a set of keys? But, with less than 24 hours left before its competitive flight and a huge deadline pending at the magazine, there wasn’t much time to troubleshoot.

I was the designated pilot, and somehow overnight I went from thinking it had a major design flaw to chalking up its poor performance to light winds. I turned hopeful.

At the festival, I sized up the competition. The kids in front of me in the registration line had kites made of construction paper curled, awkwardly stapled and attached to a string. Cute, but I had an edge over them. Mine looked good.

The guy behind me, however, was being photographed with his enormous, hexagonal, hand-sewn kite, as he boasted that he was a two-time winner. I conceded that he might out-fly me.

A number was tagged to my back and I was put in a large penned off area on the National Mall, manned only by five clipboard-toting judges. A commentator spoke over his microphone as I tried to get my kite up, first facing the wrong direction. Once the judges politely sorted that out, I repositioned myself for take two. It did its usual darting and then plummeted, barely missing a judge. After inspecting my kite, the judges informed me that my bridle was on backwards and that the tail could be longer.

I didn’t know my bridle from my spool, so they suggested I see the Kite Doctor at a nearby tent.

Contestant number 123—a mop-topped ten-year-old also sent to the Kite Doctor – consoled me a bit by complimenting my kite. His mother was bent over re-stringing his elaborate assemblage of crepe paper disks. “My circles are supposed to be three times as big,” he grumbled.

Doc re-bridled my kite, and I tried again in a patch of the mall occupied mostly by families. I found a clearing and attempted to get her airborne, but to no avail. A neighboring toddler was flying his Spiderman kite without even looking up.

In the next few hours, a dragon measuring hundreds of feet long, a three-dimensional crown with a picture of Chairman Mao in the center and a tasseled kite with an image of the Dalai Lama on it—all adhering to the festival’s China theme—took to the sky. By early afternoon, the Mall was dotted by kite flyers, so much so that it was hard to avoid crossing strings. It was tempting to join in the fray, so I tried. Tried. AND!…tried.

There’s always next year. Kenny’s already scheming about new materials.