Chronology 



147 



May 20 



■ Public program Panel discussion "Witness: Japanese and 

 Jewish Americans in WWII." 



May 20 



■ Public program The Smithsonian American Art Museum, 

 as part of the "Third Thursday" evening hours program 

 highlighting cultural events in the Seventh Street Arts Dis- 

 trict, hosted a poetry reading of new work inspired by the 

 museum's exhibition "Picturing Old New England: Image 

 and Memory" by io area poets. 



May 21 



■ Lecture Charles Brownell delivered the 1999 Dibner Li- 

 brary Lecture. His slide presentation, "Horrors! Changing 

 Perspectives of American Victorian Homes," featured classic 

 Victorian residential architecture and what it symbolized in 

 literature, film, and popular culture, and entertained an ap- 

 preciative audience of curators, historians, architectural 

 students, and Victorian hobbiests. The lecture was supported 

 by The Dibner Fund. 



May 22-November 30 



■ Exhibition "From Bento to Mixed Plate: Americans of 

 Japanese Ancestry in Multicultural Hawaii" — The Program 

 for Asian Pacific American Studies hosted this traveling ex- 

 hibition from the Japanese American National Museum in 

 the Arts and Industries Building. More than 100 volunteers 

 worked more than 1,400 hours as gallery guides for the exhi- 

 bition. More than 700 people participated in related public 

 programs, including demonstrations of raku pottery, 

 origami, and traditional Hawaiian crafts. 



May 23-January 9 



■ Exhibition "Pueblo Portraits: 50 Years at Laguna 

 Pueblo" — An exhibition of 40 black-and-white photographs 

 that chronicle photographer Lee Marmon's diverse career 

 that has spanned over half a century. The photos present an 

 intimate and personal view of Marmon's pueblo community 

 in northern New Mexico. 



May 24 



■ Public program The Smithsonian Associates' collabora- 

 tions with Smithsonian museums on cultural and 

 educational programs highlighted the extraordinary Janet 

 Annenberg Hooker Hall of Geology, Gems, and Minerals, 

 NMNH, and presented curator Jeffrey Post to an overflow 

 audience. 



May 25 



■ Management excellence The Board of Trustees of the 

 Archives of American Art meets at the National Academy of 

 Design in New York City. 



May 25 



■ Management excellence The Board of Trustees of the 

 Archives of American Art elects as President of the Board 

 Barbara Fleischman, widow of Lawrence Fleischman, one of 

 the founders of the Archives in 1954. 



May 27 



■ Exhibition and programs "Brice Marden, Work of the 

 1990s: Paintings, Drawings, and Prints," an exhibition 

 highlighting a decade of increasingly animated and colorful 

 abstractions by this widely respected American painter (b. 

 1938), opened at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Gar- 

 den, continuing through September 6. Organizing curator 

 Charles Wylie of the Dallas Museum of Art, where the show 

 originated, delivered a slide-illustrated lecture probing Mar- 

 den's response to Chinese calligraphy, the light and 

 mythology of Mediterranean culture, and the dynamic power 

 of line pioneered by such earlier artists as Abstract Expres- 

 sionist Jackson Pollock, with whom he is often compared. 

 For its East Coast premiere at the Hirshhorn, the exhibition, 

 which traveled subsequently to the Miami Art Museum and 

 the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, generated 

 gallery presentations, documentary films, and a children's 

 workshop called "What's My Line?" 



May 27 



■ Exhibition Exhibition on Margaret Mee opens in Amazo- 

 nia Science Gallery at the National Zoo. Sir Ghillean Prance, 

 director of Royal Botanic Garden at Kew, presents lecture, 

 "An Intricate Dependency: Animals and Plants in the Ama- 

 zonian Ecosystem," to NZP audience. 



May 28 



■ Exhibition The Star-Spangled Banner conservation labo- 

 ratory and exhibition opens at National Museum of 

 American History. "Preserving the Star-Spangled Banner: 

 The Flag that Inspired the National Anthem" provides a 

 look at the conservation process and story of the flag. Visi- 

 tors will be able to follow the progress of the historic 

 conservation of the Star-Spangled Banner. For much of the 

 three-year preservation project, the public will be able to see 

 the banner housed inside its glass-and-chrome conservarion 

 laboratory through floor-to-ceiling windows. The cus- 

 tomized laboratory will provide the public with its closest 

 look at the flag. 



May 28-August 



■ Exhibition The traveling exhibition, "Margaret Mee: Re- 

 turn to the Amazon," co-organized by the Royal Botanic 

 Gardens, Kew, and the Houston Museum of Natural Science, 

 opened at the National Museum of Natural History. It docu- 

 mented the life and work of Margaret Mee (1909-1988), and 

 bridged the worlds of art and natural science while con- 

 fronting the global issues of rainforest destrucrion and 



