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The cheering, clapping and speechifying are over. Historians from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History have returned after their trips to the 2024 political party conventions to collect materials – from balloons to banners to blinking wristbands – at each of them. For the last in a series of…

At the 2024 Democratic National Convention alongside politicians and delegates from across the country are political history curators from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, who are collecting what museum curators call “ephemera” – items that people wear, carry, hand out, display or otherwise use during the convention.

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…

"I feel so lucky!" Blake Lively pays tribute to Britney Spears by wearing her 2002 dress on the premiere of the movie It Ends With Us. The post Blake Lively Wears Britney Spears’ ‘Actual’ Dress To It Ends With Us Premiere: “It Should Be in the Smithsonian” first appeared on…

"It should be in the Smithsonian or the Met. But it's on me."

Bernice Johnson Reagon, a musician and scholar who used her rich, powerful contralto voice in the service of the American Civil Rights Movement and human rights struggles around the world, has died at 81

Political history curators from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History are at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, collecting items from clothing to signs that will help tell the story of the 2024 presidential election. Conversation U.S. politics editor Naomi Schalit interviewed them last week, before they set out…

Thousands of Republicans, from a presidential candidate to grassroots party members, began assembling in Milwaukee on July 15, 2024, for that quadrennial political ritual, the party convention. Political history curators from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History were there, too. They’re self-described “scavengers” of the physical objects that make…

One of the most desired gems in the world is believed to be cursed. But what is the Hope Diamond's history, value and worth?

A Texas Christian University professor and students probe the unsolved mysteries surrounding the 2001 thefts of dozens of artifacts.

Bao Li and Qing Bao will be the first pandas to reside at the Smithsonian zoo in Washington DC since last fall