June 



Exhibition: "Great American Comics: 100 Years of Cartoon Art" received generous 

 funding from King Features' Syndicate. In the centennial year of American comic 

 strips, this exhibition, which will travel, examines the social and political 

 impact and artistic heritage of cartoons in our culture. 



June 



Special Event: National Museum of Natural History anthropologist Ives Goddard 

 and colleague Dr. Kathleen Bragdon presented copies of their newly published 

 study, "Native Writings in the Massachusett Language" (American Philosophical 

 Society), to representatives of the Wampanoag Tribal Councils of Mashpee and Gay 

 Head (Massachusetts). This two-volume work contains the first translation ever 

 made of the body of known surviving manuscripts written by Christian Indians in 

 southeastern Massachusetts during the Colonial period. 



June 



Research: Speckle interferometry observations of Supernova 1987A by a 

 Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory team revealed a displacement in the 

 supernova's center of brightness with respect to its suspected pre-explosion 

 progenitor star. This suggests that the star may have been part of a binary 

 system and that one component survived the massive explosion. 



June 



Program: The National Museum of Natural History added a major component to its 

 biodiversity program by taking over administrative responsibility for the Minimum 

 Critical Size of Ecosystems project from the World Wildlife Fund, which initiated 

 it. The project, located in Manaus, Brazil, has made a significant contribution 

 to tropical forest conservation by demonstrating that species disappear from a 

 land area in inverse relation to its size. 



June 



Phone System: To handle the Institution's half million annual public inquiries 

 more efficiently, a new phone system was installed in the Visitor Information and 

 Associates' Reception Center. 



June 



Startup: The Office of Folklife Programs initiated a startup of the on-demand 

 cassette fulfillment distribution of Folkways titles not commercially available. 



June 



Publication: The Office of Interdisciplinary Studies' brochure titled "The 

 Wholeness of Knowledge," detailing the history and purpose of the office, was 

 published. 



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