June 



■ Award "Ranchers Form a Radical Center to Protect 

 Wide-Open Spaces" by Jake Page (Smithsonian, June 

 1997) won the Western Writers of America's Spur Award 

 for Best Western Short Nonficnon. 



June 



■ Awards Program Finance recognition awards recog- 

 nized Finance staff contributions. 



standing of an art object. To demonstrate the central 

 source of a carved-wood, stringed sculpture by British 

 artist Henry Moore (1898-1986), Valerie J. Fletcher, 

 curator of Sculpture, borrowed nineteenth-century 

 mathematical models from the Smithsonian's Museum 

 of American History, matching those that inspired the 

 artist 60 years ago. The impact of Moore's innovarion — 

 in which organic form is imbued with the logic of 

 engineering — was exemplified in other sculptures from 

 the permanent collection by Constantin Brancusi, Naum 

 Gabo, Barbara Hepworth, Alexander Calder, and others. 



June 



■ Minority Leadership Program The Smithsonian 

 Institution Libraries' Valerie Wheat, Librarian of the 

 Museum Reference Center, one of the Libraries' 18 

 branches, participated in a program designed to prepare 

 librarians from a racial minority group for top leader- 

 ship positions in research and academic libraries. The 

 program, which is sponsored by the Association of 

 Research Libraries, a group whose membership includes 

 the 120 largest research libraries in North America, 

 offers two training institutes and a mentoting network. 

 Ms. Wheat was one of 21 librarians chosen from a highly 

 competitive pool. The Department of Education 

 awarded ARL a grant to establish this program. 



June 



■ Award The Smithsonian Libraries was awarded 

 $10,000 by the Latino Initiative Fund to purchase Latino 

 newspapers, magazines, and journals in print and 

 microform formats for its collections. 



June 2 



■ Training Seminar The Smithsonian Accessibility Pro- 

 gram presented a training session titled "Accessibility 

 Critiques of Several SI Web Sites." The session was 

 offered to accessibility liaisons, web designers, museum 

 educators, and staff responsible for working with the 

 public. Presenting the session was an expert on creating 

 Web sites accessible to people who are blind. 



June 4 



■ Exhibition "The Collection in Context: Henry Moore's 

 Stringed Figure No. I, 1937," opened at the Hirshhorn 

 Museum and Sculpture Garden, continuing a series that 

 uses an interdisciplinary approach to deepen under- 



June 6, June 11 



■ Awards Program The National Science Resources 

 Center, in partnership with the White House Office of 

 Science and Technology Policy and the National Science 

 Foundation, hosted programs for teachers who received 

 the 1997 Presidential Awards for Excellence in Elemen- 

 tary and Secondary Mathematics and Science Teaching. 



June 16 



■ Exhibition opening Colombia exhibition featuring 

 Jose Mutis botanical illustrations opens at Amazonia 

 Science Gallery. 



June ij 



■ Purchase agreement The Tropical Research Institute 

 formalized a purchase agreement of a six-hectare lot of 

 land on Isia Colon, Bocas del Toro, where it will estab- 

 lish a research and educational center. 



June 18 



■ Exhibition and Programs Associate Curator Olga M. 

 Viso of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden 

 organized "Triumph of the Spirit: Carlos Alfonzo, A 

 Survey, 1975— 1991" for the Miami Art Museum, an 

 exhibition that opened in Washington in a slightly 

 abridged version. The show went far in establishing an 

 international context for Alfonzo, a Havana-born, 

 Miami-based painter (1950-1991) who died of AIDS at 

 age 40. A scholarly catalog with an essay by Viso and 

 contributions from Giulio V. Blanc, Dan Cameron, 

 Julia P. Herzberg, and Cesar Trasobares accompanied 

 the show, and Hilton Kramer of The New York Observer, 

 among others in the local and national press, praised 

 Alfonzo's expressive, symbol-laden imagery. The 

 exhibition's Washington presentation received major 

 support from the Smithsonian Latino Initiatives Fund, 



36 



