Chronology 



137 



December 10 



■ Publications awards The Office of Public Affairs was pre- 

 served the following awards in the National Association of 

 Governmenr Communicators' Blue Pencil competition: First 

 Place for the quarterly newsletter Smithsonian Institution 

 Research Reports; First Place for The Torch, the employee news- 

 paper; and First Place for the annual report, Smithsonian Year 

 1997, jointly produced with Smithsonian Institution Press. 



December 1 1 



■ Public program "Legacies of 1898: War, Transirion, and 

 Transformation," a discussion of community, citizenship, and 

 sovereignty at the National Museum of American History. In 

 conjunction with "Encuentros: Latino America at the Smith- 

 sonian." 



Canal Zone Biological Area retired in 1998 and was ap- 

 pointed Staff Scientist Emeritus. He will continue to pursue 

 his investigations of V ' rania-Omphalea interacrions, and will 

 advise staff, students, and visitors. 



January 



■ Exhibition The National Postal Museum opens the 

 "Down With the Frauds!" exhibition of rare revenue stamps 

 used to regulate adulterated foods. 



January 



■ Exhibition closes "Star Wars: The Magic of Myth" closed. 

 Nearly a million people visited the exhibition in the year 

 and a half it was on display at the National Air and Space 

 Museum. 



December 17 



■ Public program The Smithsonian American Arr Museum, 

 with the National Portrait Gallery, began evening hours on 

 the third Thursday of each month, as part of a neighborhood 

 program organized by rhe Downtown Business Improvement 

 District (BID) to increase foor Traffic in the Seventh Street 

 Arts District. The inaugural event is a special public preview 

 of David Beck's L'Opera. Evening hours continued through 

 December 1999. 



December 1 8— April 25 



■ Exhibition Artist David Beck's miniature opera house, ti- 

 tled L'Opera. delighted crowds of visitors of all ages visiting 

 the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Beck's intricate 

 creation featured more than 200 hand-carved, mechanized 

 figures performing or watching an extravagant presentation 

 of Verdi's Aida. 



December 23 



■ Special event The Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center 

 in Hutchinson, Kansas, became an Affiliate and held a press 

 event at the museum. 



December 31 



■ Acquisition The National Postal Museum acquires the 

 pocket watch and fob of John Starr March, RMS Titanic, 

 from John A. Corwin III. 



January 



■ Service Beginning in January, the National Museum of 

 African Art offered a new monthly conservation clinic open 

 to the public in which conservation staff advised visitors on 

 the proper care of their collections. 



January 



'Appointment Staff scientist Neal G. Smith who started his 

 career with the Smithsonian in 1963 as biologist for the 



January 



■ Keynote presentations SERC scientists gave several keynore 

 papers at the Marine Bioinvasions Conference in Cambridge, 

 Massachussetts. 



January 



■ New media initiative The Smithsonian American Art Mu- 

 seum debuted its fully redesigned Web site, which now 

 accommodates the museum's continuing growth as a majot 

 on-line research and educational resource. More than 3,000 

 digital images of artworks from the permanent collection are 

 available, as are the museum's extensive research databases, 

 including the Inventories of American Painting and Sculp- 

 ture. The site is home to an on-line art reference librarian, 

 who handles nearly 7,000 queries about American art each 

 year, a long-distance learning project, and 14 virtual exhibi- 

 tions, including "Robert Cottingham: Eyeing America," the 

 first time a contemporary artist and a major museum collab- 

 orated to create an on-line solo retrospecrive. 



January 



■ Nomination Smithsonian Folkways Recordings' Southern 

 Banjo Sounds by Mike Seeger was nominated for a Grammy 

 Award in the category of Best Traditional Folk Recording. 



January 



■ Research results New observations of supernovae shed light 

 on the possibility that the expanding universe is acceleraring 

 in its growth, implying that there is a repulsive force com- 

 ponent to gravity. 



January-April 



■ Training (semester programs) The Tropical Research Insti- 

 tute in coordination with Princeron University and McGill 

 University, Canada, cosponsored field semester programs for 

 biology students from both universities with Santa Maria 

 Catholic University and the City of Knowledge, in Panama. 



