Reports of the Museums and Research Institutes 



29 



ily workshops on santos and masking traditions, and a schol- 

 arly conference on the "Legacies of 1898." 



For the 1999 centennial of Duke Ellington's birth, the 

 museum took a leadership role in the celebration. The 

 Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra led with "Duke 

 Ellington: A Centennial Tribute," a nationwide concert tour. 

 It touched down in Washington, D.C., in February for the 

 Duke Ellington 100th Birthday Celebration at the Kennedy 

 Center, and in April presented Ellington's three rarely per- 

 formed sacred concerts at the Washington National 

 Cathedral. In July, the orchestra embarked on its first-ever 

 world tour, "Duke Ellington Cotton Club Revue," visiting 

 14 cities and headlining in Canada, Europe, and the Middle 

 East. The Program in African-American Culture continued 

 its initiative to extend the Ellington Collection to teachers 

 and students in Washington, D.C. On Ellington's birth date, 

 April 29, the museum and students from Washington, D.C, 

 were linked via satellite with students in Kansas City, Mis- 

 souri, and Cleveland, Ohio, for a distance learning 

 experience that included live performances, lectures, and 

 Ellington family guests. In addition, the museum hosted the 

 Ellington Youth Festival, which included poetry readings 

 and an art show. One of the key additions to the museum's 

 collection was the acquisition of archival material including 

 music, correspondence, photographs, and newspaper articles 

 relating to the activities of the Duke Ellington Orchestra, 

 along with a Wurlitzer electronic piano and cigarette case 

 owned and used by Ellington. 



The Program in African-American Culture launched the 

 multiyear series "African-Americans at the Millennium: 

 From Middle Passage to Cyberspace." The focus of PAAC's 

 annual conference was the Middle Passage, the second leg of 

 the Atlantic slave trade triangle. This is a story of pain, sur- 

 vival, and transformation — a historic episode that 

 transformed millions of people from Africans to African- 

 Americans and gave rise to the construcrion of a social 

 category called race. 



The Chamber Music Program hosred its season series of 

 concerts for Washington, D.C, audiences. The centerpiece of 

 the program, the Axelrod Quartet, traveled with the Stradi- 

 varius quartet of instruments from the museum's collections, 

 performing on these masterpieces in Fort Worth, Texas, and 

 Toronto, Canada. 



Always a high point of the year, the museum's annual 

 "Holiday Celebration" drew more than 100,000 visitors in 

 three days in December. Audiences sampled, participated in, 

 and learned about the diverse ways American communities 

 celebrate the holiday season through music, crafts, dance, 

 and food. 



FY 1999 saw the beginning of two new education pro- 

 grams developed by the Education and Visitor Services 

 Department. In collaboration with the District of Columbia 

 Public Libraries and Reading Is Fundamental (RIF), the mu- 

 seum launched a multiyear lireracy and history education 

 project called "The Story in History." As part of the project, 

 ten classes of fourth graders from metro area "at-risk" schools 

 came to visit the museum's Hands on History Room 



(HOHR) twice. Each student had the opportunity to select 

 three thematically related books to keep. In June, the chil- 

 dren returned to the museum with their families for the 

 culminating event of The Story In History, the Family Literacy 

 Festival. This after-hours event fearured award-winning au- 

 thors reading from their books, storytellers, and related 

 hands-on museum activities. Five hundred children, their 

 families, and teachers attended. The second new program, 

 "OutStoiy," addresses the museum's commitment to better 

 serve families and children. Each program invites families to 

 explore America's past through museum objects, literature, 

 and hands-on activities. 



The annual Kids Learning History Conference took place 

 at American History in April, cosponsored by the National 

 History Alliance and the National Council for History Edu- 

 cation. More than 275 teachers and museum educators 

 attended workshops and seminars designed to help them 

 bring innovative educational practices into their classrooms 

 and local museums. 



"Disability and the Practice of Public History" was an 

 interdisciplinary conference for disability scholars, public 

 history and museum professionals, exhibit developers, and 

 activists on integrating ideas about people with disabilities 

 into history content, beyond issues of access. 



The museum Web site (http://amencanhistory.si.edu) 

 continues to expand and better serve our audiences. This 

 year was a blockbuster for virtual exhibitions such as "Edison 

 After 40," "A Visual Journey: Photographs by Lisa Law," 

 "The Feather Trade," and "Photographing History: Fred J. 

 Maroon and the Nixon Years." Orher new sites focused on 

 collections ("Parthian Coins" and the "Ellington Archive 

 Virtual Tour and Program") and events ("Encuentros," the 

 "Disability and the Practice of Public History" Conference, 

 and rhe "Duke Ellington Anniversary Sire," which was nom- 

 inated for a Smithsonian Institution Exhibition Award. 



This year, the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention 

 and Innovation kicked off its 1999—2000 theme, "Invention 

 at Play," an exploration of the creative role of play in the in- 

 ventive process and the importance of invention in American 

 toys, games, and sports. The annual showcase exhibition, 

 "Sporting Invention," featured Howard Head's skis and 

 tennis rackets, along with a prorotype of a snowboard accessi- 

 ble to individuals with physical disabilities. To celebrate the 

 150th anniversary of Lewis Latimer, rhe Center commis- 

 sioned the Brewery Troupe to create a puppet play about this 

 African American inventor's life. "Lewis Latimer: Renais- 

 sance Man" was performed at the museum in 1998 for school 

 and family audiences, and in March 1999 a taped broadcast 

 of the show aired in more than 6,000 schools nationwide. 

 The puppets, depicting Lewis Latimer, Frederick Douglass, 

 and Thomas Edison, are now part of the museum's collection. 



The Center's ongoing program "Innovative Lives" intro- 

 duces middle schoolers to living inventors. In 1999, Ann 

 Moore, inventor of the Snugli baby carrier, and Newman 

 Darby, inventor of rhe sport of windsurfing, came to the 

 museum. To encourage use of invention and support research 

 on invention, in 1999 the Center initiated the "Travel to 



