October I 



■ Exhibit Opens The Zoo's refurbished Great Cats 

 exhibit opened October I. Second-graders from 

 Alexandria's Bucknell School cut the ribbon. A 

 grant from Save the Tiger Fund paid in part for 

 the renovations. 



October I 



■ Electronic Journals The Smithsonian Institution 

 Libraries brought 177 full-text journals online and 

 made them available to its users in the Institution 

 through an agreement between Academic Pub- 

 lishers and the Chesapeake Information and Research 

 Library Alliance, of which the Libraries is a founding 

 member. 



October I 



■ Curators Installed Leslie K. Overstreet assumed the 

 position of Smithsonian Instirution Libraries' Curator of 

 Natural History Rare Books scheduled to open in 2001. 

 Ms. Overstreet is involved in the planning and develop- 

 ment of the new Natural History Rare Book Library. Mrs. 

 Jefferson Patterson contributed funds to support this posi- 

 tion for the first three years. In June 1998 Ron Brashear be- 

 came the Curator of Rare Books in the History of Science 

 and Technology. Mr. Brashear serves researchers working 

 in the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Tech- 

 nology. Both Ms. Overstreet and Mr. Brashear are in the 

 Libraries' Special Collections Department. 



October 7 



■ Public Program "Smithsonian Honors Queen of 

 Salsa" — Celia Cru2, the undisputed Queen of Salsa, 

 received the National Museum of American History 

 Programa Latino Lifetime Achievement Award for Excel- 

 lence in Music. Ms. Cruz donated one of her world- 

 renowned costumes to the museum and during a public 

 oral history session, reflected upon her career, the chang- 

 ing nature of the Latin music business, and the role of 

 women in the Latin music business. 



October 7 



■ Exhibition The National Postal Museum opened the 

 "As Precious As Gold" exhibition examining the gold 



rush and the struggle of the Post Office Department to 

 ensure that stampeders received adequate mail service. 



October p 



■ Exhibition "Mayhem by Mail," an exhibition that ex- 

 plores the three categories of crimes investigated by the 

 U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the nation's oldest con- 

 sumer protection agency, opened at the National Postal 

 Museum. 



October p 



■ Exhibition and Programs Introducing biblical scenes, 

 nudes, portraits, allegories, and landscapes by a mid- 

 twentieth-century British artist (1891-1959) whose paint- 

 ings are highly celebrated in England but little 

 exhibited or studied abroad, "Stanley Spencer: An 

 English Vision" opened at the Hirshhorn Museum and 

 Sculpture Garden. Coorganized by Hirshhorn Director 

 James T Demetrion and Andrea Rose of the British 

 Council in London, the show generated a Sunday-after- 

 noon lecture series (October 12— November 16) exploring 

 Spencer's work from four distinct perspectives: an over- 

 view by Director Duncan Robinson of the Fitzwilliam 

 Museum in Cambridge; the artist's milieu by curator 

 Judith Collins of the Tate Gallery in London; his 

 religious themes by Professor Nicholas P. Woltersdorff 

 of the Yale University Divinity School; and his impact 

 on later artists by Director Hugh Davies of the Museum 

 of Contemporary Art in San Diego. British writer Fiona 

 MacCarthy contributed an essay to a fully illustrated 

 195-page catalog, and the show received major funding 

 support from Howard and Roberta Ahmanson, 

 Fieldstead and Company. After closing in Washington 

 on January 11, 1998, the exhibition traveled to the 

 Centro Cultural/Arte Contemporaneo in Mexico City 

 (February 19-May io, 1998) and the California Palace of 

 the Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francis- 

 co (June 8-September 6, 1998). 



October 11— December 7 



■ Exhibition "Wade in the Water: African American 

 Sacred Music Traditions" — Collaboratively developed 

 between the National Museum of American History 

 and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibit Ser- 

 vice, "Wade in the Water" examined how the legacy of 

 music sung during slavery and the development of the 

 worship practices of America's black churches during 

 the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has contributed 



