December 



■ Facility Planning The Suitland Collections Center 

 Master Development Plan was approved by the Na- 

 tional Capital Planning Commission. The report pro- 

 vides a physical planning guide for meeting the 

 Institution's collections care, storage, and research needs. 



December ippj-Marcb ipp4 



m Exhibition "Before Freedom Came: African Ameri- 

 can Life in the Antebellum South," an exhibition at the 

 Anacosria Museum, explored the life styles of enslaved 

 and free black people, their regional work patterns, 

 struggles, and triumphs. 



December 



■ Grant The Center for Tropical Forest Science at the 

 Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute received a 

 grant of $520,000 from the National Institutes of 

 Health to conduct tropical forest research, including the 

 initiation of a 50-hectare forest dynamics plot in Korup 

 National Park, Cameroon, Central Africa. 



December 



■ Outreach The Office of Public Affairs ran the first of 

 five ad campaigns for the year in local Latino news- 

 papers. OPA staff wrote the text in Spanish. The cam- 

 paigns were geared toward the Christmas holidays, 

 springtime events, the Festival of American Folklife, 

 summer events near the time of the Latin American Fes- 

 tival held in Washington, D.C., and Hispanic Heritage 

 Month. 



Republic of Benin" (formerly Dahomey), which featured 

 two iron altars of the Fon peoples from Ouidah, a city 

 on the Atlantic coast of what is now the Republic of 

 Benin. 



December 



m Resident Scholars The Smithsonian Institution Librar- 

 ies selected Helen Rozwadowski, Ph.D. candidate at the 

 University of Pennsylvania, and Steven A. Walton, pre- 

 doctoral student at the University of Toronto Institute 

 for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technol- 

 ogy, as the 1994 Dibner Library Resident Scholats in the 

 History of Science and Technology. 



December 1 



■ Special Event The National Postal Museum hosted 

 the firsr day of issue ceremony for the U.S. Postal 

 Service's issuance of the AIDS awareness stamp. 



December 2—3 



■ Research Project IOTA, a two-element optical and in- 

 frared interferometer intended for high-resolution obser- 

 vations of astronomical objects from the Whipple 

 Observatory in Arizona, took its "first light"— measured 



a single star by the system's two separated telescopes. 



December 3 



■ Volunteers The Visitor Information and Associates' 

 Reception Center held the annual appreciation event for 

 volunteer information specialists in the Great Hall of 

 the Smithsonian Institution Building. 



December 



December 3 



■ Gift Exactly 100 years after Charles Lang Freer pur- 

 chased his first Chinese painting, Herons and Water 

 Plants, by an anonymous Ming dynasty (1368-1644) art- 

 ist, the Freer Gallery of Art was given a mate to the 

 painting. The second painting was discovered, identi- 

 fied, purchased, and donated to the gallery by Kyoichi 

 Itoh, an East Asian painting conservator on the Freer 

 staff. 



December 



a Exhibition The National Museum of African Art 

 opened the exhibition, "Asen: Iron Altars from Ouidah. 



■ Lecture Chandler Screven, director of the Inter- 

 national Laboratory of Visitor Studies at the University 

 of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, spoke on "Museums and In- 

 formal Education," sponsored by the Office of Museum 

 Programs. 



December 4 



■ Lecture The Archives of American Art New 

 England Regional Center and the Friends of Mt. Au- 

 burn Cemetery cosponsored a slide lecture about 

 sculptor Harriet Hosmer (1830— 1908) by Hosmer 

 biographer Dolly Sherwood. 



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