Projecc of the Archives Center. Additional sponsors included 

 the Black Film Institute of the University of the District of 

 Columbia and "Black Film Review" magazine. On April 28, 

 more than 300 junior and senior high school students from 18 

 public schools the Washington, D.C., area participated in a 

 showcase of poetry, song, and dance during the Smithsonian's 

 Fourth Annual Duke Ellington Youth Festival. The students 

 also displayed original works of art based on themes in 

 Ellington's life and work in a temporary exhibition presented 

 in conjunction with the festival. 



In March, for Women's History Month, the museum of- 

 fered "What's American About American Quilts?," a confer- 

 ence examining aspects of American and European quilting 

 traditions. The forum was presented with support from the 

 American Quilt Defense Fund. On March 14, the museum 

 opened the exhibition "Putting Her Best Quilt Forward: Ex- 

 hibiting at the Fair," which focused on how fairs gave women 

 of the 19th century an opportunity to display their talents and 

 gather new ideas for quilts. Both the conference and the exhi- 

 bition were offered in conjunction National Quilting Day. An- 

 other Women's History Month program, "The Yellow Rose of 

 Suffrage," was a one-woman performance by playwright- 

 actress Jane Cox based on the life of suffragist Carrie Chap- 

 man Catt. In August, to celebrate the 75th anniversary of 

 woman suffrage, the museum also produced the symposium 

 "Visions of Equality: Past and Future" on August 25. 



Several new program series presented lectures and discus- 

 sions throughout the year. The Forum on Environmental Jus- 

 tice series examined pollution in the nation's capital, 

 environmental justice and Native Americans, and other top- 

 ics. Looking American focused on civilian dress during World 

 War II. Staff of the museum's Division of Costume offered 

 talks on subjects such as wartime restrictions and fashion, ap- 

 propriate dress for factory work, and the war's influence on 

 clothing styles. The museum also inaugurated its Viewpoints 

 program, a series of informal talks by museum staff on sub- 

 jects ranging from sea stories to caring for family heirlooms. 



The Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra (SJMO) pre- 

 sented four weekends of performances from April through Au- 

 gust at the National and Lincoln theaters. Musical directors 

 Gunther Schuller and David N. Baker led the orchestra and 

 the audiences through the music of Mary Lou Williams, 

 Chick Webb, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hamp- 

 ton, Woody Herman, Miles Davis, Jimmie Lunceford, 

 Tommy Dorsey and other composers and orchestras. Like the 

 SJMO, the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society is directed 

 from the museum's Division of Cultural History. From the 

 Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra to the Castle Trio, the 

 society's ensembles offered works of Franois Coupenn, Marin 

 Marais, Henry Purcell, Mozart, Haydn, Brahms, Schubert, 

 and other composers well known and lesser known. As every 

 year, many of the selections were performed on original instru- 

 ments from the museum's collections, including the 1854 

 "Queen Victoria" piano and the 1701 "Servais" Stradivanus 

 cello. The concerts often featured guest performers, and this 



year several of the evenings began with brief lectures by noted 

 scholars on conservation, recordings of early music, compos- 

 ers, and other subjects. In August, the Smithsonian Chamber 

 Players released a new CD, Metamorphosis, that features Sir Ed- 

 ward Elgar's Serenade, Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, and 

 Richard Strauss's Metamorphosen. 



In December, the museum's annual Holiday Celebration 

 delighted thousands of visitors with music, storytelling, and 

 demonstrations of holiday foods and crafts that reflect the 

 many ways Americans celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, 

 Kwanzaa, and the New Year. 



"With Pen and Graver: Women Graphic Artists Before 

 1900, " which opened in February, was one of the many well- 

 received exhibitions at the museum this year. The exhibition 

 included more than 80 examples of commercial and fine arts 

 work by some of the leading women artists in the 19th cen- 

 tury. The featured works included examples by such artists as 

 Fanny Palmer, lithographer for Currier & Ives; Maud Hum- 

 phrey, an illustrator and the mother of Humphrey Bogart; 

 and Emily Sartain, a Philadelphia art teacher. Lithographs, 

 greeting cards, illustrated books, copper plates, and wood 

 blocks were among the objects on display. 



To commemorate the 50th annivetsary of the end of World 

 War II, NMAH presented several temporary exhibitions. 

 "The Virgil Whyte 'All-Girl' Band," an exhibition of photo- 

 graphs, documents, and artifacts produced by the museum's 

 Archives Center, showed how a touring U.S.O. band during 

 World War II promoted the ideal of equality in job opportu- 

 nity for women within the field of music. The band's director, 

 Virgil Whyte, demanded that his female musicians receive 

 union pay equal to that of male musicians of comparable 

 skills — all within the context or the traditional "home front" 

 partnership which women were expected to contribute to the 

 war effort. "Women War Workers" highlighted the contribu- 

 tions of women during World War II through a display of 

 photographs, cartoons, wartime advertisements, sheet music, 

 and a rivet hammer, welding mask, coveralls, and other tools 

 and equipment used by women during the war. "Produce for 

 Victory: Posters on the American Home Front, 1941— 1945" ex- 

 amined the images and underlying messages of the posters 

 used to help mobilize Americans during the war. "World War 

 II: Sharing Memories" offered a look back at the World War 

 II era through paintings of wartime scenes commissioned by 

 the U.S. armed forces during the war and everyday objects 

 used by men and women at war and on the home front. Visi- 

 tors were encouraged to record their memories of the war in 

 notebooks, and hundreds of people wrote first-hand accounts 

 or reminiscences of that era handed down among family mem- 

 bers. Many of the notes were posted on a bulletin board inside 

 the exhibition for other visitors to read. 



Documentary photography shows at the museum explored 

 subjects such as industrial life and work in "Images of Steel" 

 to the plight of migrant workers in "Earth Angels: Migrant 

 Children in America," to "Images of Vietnam: March 1970— 

 February 1971," an exhibition of 48 photographs taken by pho- 



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