Chronology 



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March 12-13 



■ Interview Candido Camero, a percussionist, was inter- 

 viewed for the Smithsonian Institution Jazz Oral History 

 Program. The Jazz Oral History Program is part of Amer- 

 ica's Jazz Heritage, a partnership of the Lila Wallace- 

 Reader's Digest Fund and the Smithsonian Institution. 



March 12-July 23 



■ Exhibition The National Museum of African Art pre- 

 senred "The Art of African Currency," featuring a variety of 

 objects that have been used across Africa to facilitate trade 

 and measure wealth. 



March 1 6 



■ Exhibition The Archives of American Art opens the exhi- 

 bition "Selections from the Fairfield Pottet Papers" in rhe 

 Gallery Space of the Archives' New York Regional Center. 



March 1 7-1 8 



■ Public program The National Museum of American His- 

 tory presented "Slavery in History and Memory," a two-day 

 symposium that looked at the issue of race through audience 

 and panel interactions on how slavery is portrayed in na- 

 tional media, in performances, and academia. 



March 21 



■ Portrait unveiling Former President George Bush was 

 among the guests at a reception hosted by the National Por- 

 trait Gallery in honor of jazz musician Lionel Hampton for 

 the unveiling of his portrait by Fred Brown, presented to the 

 Gallery by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani on behalf of the People 

 of New York City. The event was sponsored by Lucent 

 Technologies. 



March 22-24 



■ Meeting The National Museum of Natutal History 

 cosponsored and hosted the American Institute of Biological 

 Sciences' (AIBS) annual meeting, gathering members from 

 across the country. The meeting featured plenary sessions fol- 

 lowed by interactive synthesis groups with speakers Stephen 

 J. Gould, Dan Janzen, Gene Likens, Lynn Margulis, Ernst 

 Mayr, Gordon Orians, Ghillean Prance, Marvalee Wake, and 

 E. O. Wilson, all internationally renowned for their work in 

 rheir respective disciplines. The meetings proved to be so 

 successful and provocative that two articles have subse- 

 quently been published in the June 2000 issue of The 

 Scientist, describing the lectures given by visiting scientists 

 and summing up the larger biological scene. 



March 24 



■ Exhibition, special event The Origins Museum affiliate in 

 Arlington, Texas, opened "Sports and the Nation." Showcas- 



ing artifacts and works of art representing eight different 

 sports, "Sports and the Nation" includes featured collections 

 from both the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery and 

 the National Museum of American History. Sporting equip- 

 ment, trophies, uniforms, portraiture, and sculpture 

 highlight the career achievements of such legendary sports 

 figures as Muhammad Ali, Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Casey 

 Stengel, Nolan Ryan, Bobby Orr, Terry Bradshaw, Arnold 

 Palmer, and John L. Sullivan. 



March 24 



■ Publication Dr. Melinda A. Zeder of the National Mu- 

 seum of Natural History's Department of Anthropology and 

 Dr. Brian Hesse (University of Alabama at Birmingham) 

 published "The Initial Domestication of Goats (Capra hircus) 

 in the Zagros Mountains 10,000 Years Ago" in the March 

 24, 2000, issue of Science. Using museum collections and the 

 acceletator mass spectrometer (AMS), Zeder and Hesse were 

 able to identify initial domestication of livestock at the Ganj 

 Dareh archaeological site 10,000 years ago by dating small 

 fragments of bones directly. They were able to develop a new 

 technique for identifying initial domestication by recon- 

 structing the profile of animals slaughtered by inhabitants of 

 this early site. They found that domestication did not affect 

 animal size; instead, the animal bones indicate that there 

 was a shift in the composition of the adult portion of the 

 herd toward smaller, female animals. This research resolves a 

 long-standing controversy over the environmental and social 

 context of initial domestication, and highlights the impor- 

 tance that museum collections play in ongoing scientific 

 exploration. 



March 25-27 



■ Workshop The National Museum of Natural History held 

 the National Science Foundation's Partnerships for Enhanc- 

 ing Expertise in Taxonomy (PEET) workshop. Building 

 upon the community gathered through two previous PEET 

 conferences, this year's PEET conference focused upon 

 monography (the practice of monographic research); the 

 tools, both traditional and modern, of monographic research; 

 and the dissemination of monographic products in an elec- 

 tronic age. The purpose of the PEET confetences is to share 

 expertise and resources among the systematics community 

 so that systematics can be strengthened and improved as a 

 discipline. The program offered a keynote address, panel dis- 

 cussions, discussion groups, posters, and demonstrations. 

 Further, a two-day session workshop specially designed for 

 students followed the conference. It offered half-day sessions 

 on topics such as phylogenetic analysis, nomenclature, and 

 character analysis. Additionally, the 75 student participants 

 had the oppottunity to work with the collections from borh 

 the museum and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's 

 Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, and to interact with 

 curators and researchers from PEET-hosting institutions in 

 the Washington area. Funding for the PEET conference and 

 workshop came from the National Science Foundation, the 



