Historians diving for balloons and hoping for hot dish: What Smithsonian curators will be doing at the Democratic National Convention

Curators from the Smithsonian were at the GOP convention in July to bring back items for the museum, including balloons. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Three political history curators from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History are heading to Chicago and the 2024 Democratic National Convention soon to collect stuff – or as the professionals call it, ephemera: everything from balloons to tickets to articles of clothing. The Smithsonian’s political campaign collection includes items dating back to George Washington.

Conversation politics editor Naomi Schalit spoke with Claire Jerry, Jon Grinspan and Lisa Kathleen Graddy about what curators got at the Republican National Convention in July and what they hope to snare in Chicago. All those items will be added to the collection in an effort, as Grinspan describes it, to “make sense of our moment to people wondering what we were all thinking.”