http://aroundthemall.smithsonianmag.com A new Smithsonian blog covering scenes and sightings from the Smithsonian museums and beyond. Mon, 12 May 2008 20:31:04 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en    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 ... http://aroundthemall.smithsonianmag.com/archives/262   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 ... http://aroundthemall.smithsonianmag.com/archives/259   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 ... http://aroundthemall.smithsonianmag.com/archives/251   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 ... http://aroundthemall.smithsonianmag.com/archives/249 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 ... http://aroundthemall.smithsonianmag.com/archives/242 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 ... http://aroundthemall.smithsonianmag.com/archives/239 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 ... http://aroundthemall.smithsonianmag.com/archives/238 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 ... http://aroundthemall.smithsonianmag.com/archives/235 Last night marked a new chapter in the Stephen Colbert—Smithsonian saga. American History Museum director Brent Glass has had a change of heart. Stephen Colbert, he says, is a National Treasure. It started back in January, when the Comedy Central satirist met with Glass and lobbied him to include a portrait ... http://aroundthemall.smithsonianmag.com/archives/233   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, ... http://aroundthemall.smithsonianmag.com/archives/220