Smithsonian Magazine

TWITTER: @SmithsonianMag INSTAGRAM: @smithsonianmagazine FACEBOOK: smithsonianmagazine “I could almost smell the musty aroma of ancient British history.” Fighting Fire With Fire Every year my heart breaks at the devastation and loss from forest wildfires (“Under Control,” April/May 2023). It is heartening to learn that communities are coming together to take the lead in preventing this loss and devastation. It seems counterintuitive to “burn” to prevent fires, but the data shows that it works. Going back to the old ways isn’t always a bad thing. K Spezia | Queens, New York For too long, many folks have looked to the government for answers when, in fact, programs like these work so much better. What an uplifting story about citizens helping each other. The results speak for themselves, and if government programs continue, they should be modeled after these…

OFTEN, CURATING an exhibition is about getting out of the way of the story and allowing the collections to speak for themselves. That is not the case for “Treasures and Trouble: Looking Inside a Legendary Blues Archive,” a new show at the National Museum of American History about the folklorist Robert “Mack” McCormick and his expansive archive on blues artists in Texas and the Deep South from the early 1900s through the 1970s. Mc-Cormick began collecting material in the 1950s and continued until his death in 2015. His archive, covering hundreds of artists, is among the world’s largest and most significant collections on the blues and other vernacular musical traditions. The exhibition, however, is as much about the process of curation and collection—for the Smithsonian curators and certainly for McCormick…

TOP OF THE PAGE: A CONCEPT BEFORE ITS TIME New chronology of Afrofuturism unites yesterday and tomorrow What would our world look like if the colonization of Africa and the oppression of its people never occurred? The answer is something that can only be imagined, and for decades Black artists and leaders have done just that, creating versions of that alternative universe. From liberator Harriet Tubman’s reliance on the stars for guidance to the otherwordly 1970s costumes worn by the Labelle singers (right), the “Afrofuturism” exhibition at the National Museum of African American History and Culture offers a look at how generations of Black people have envisioned themselves and their futures. “It’s important to recognize how Afrofuturism really provides pathways for artists and others to express radical sentiment in their art and…

RUTH HANDLER, who co-founded Mattel with her husband, Elliot Handler, and Harold Matson in 1945, noticed her daughter, Barbara, playing with paper dolls and dreaming about what kind of woman she would become. Ruth decided there should be a proper doll onto which girls could project their highest aspirations. (In another version of this origin story, Ruth got the idea from an adult novelty doll she’d seen while vacationing in Switzerland.) Ruth named the doll Barbie, after her daughter. The first model went on display in March 1959 at the annual Toy Fair in New York City. In Barbie’s first television ad, broadcast that same year, a woman sings from the point of view of a young girl, promising that one day, she’ll be just like Barbie. “Til then, I know…

HE HAD HIS FIRST fateful meeting with Barbie when the two co-starred in a 1961 TV commercial. Since then, Ken—full name, Ken Carson—has served as her longtime on-and-off romantic partner and has enjoyed an astonishingly varied career, including stints as an astronaut, Olympian in multiple sports, soda jerk, dog trainer, dentist and rapping rock star. Of course, Ken has to be a Renaissance man to keep up with Barbie. These are just a few of his many lives. 1961 KEN Introduced as Barbie’s boyfriend at that year’s Toy Fair, the 12-inch-tall doll (a half-inch taller than Barbie) had a molded plastic coif and was ready for aquatic adventures: Ken ’61 came with sandals, a yellow beach towel and a pair of stylish red swim trunks. 1978 SUPERSTAR KEN Amid disco fever, this dance-floor dynamo was billed as “More…

HE FAMOUSLY CAPTURED industrial America—the Brooklyn Bridge, Pittsburgh’s steel mills—with his monumental canvases. But the painter Joseph Stella (1877-1946) looked to nature for respite, escaping his Manhattan studio to visit the New York Botanical Garden and to paint in southern Italy, where he grew up. “My devout wish,” the artist wrote, “[is] that my every working day might begin and end—as a good omen—with the light, gay painting of a flower.” The joy Stella found in flowers is apparent throughout a new show that opens this month at Pennsylvania’s Brandy-wine Museum of Art, which co-organized it with the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. It’s the first major exhibition to focus on Stella’s nature paintings—and the artist’s first big show in nearly 30 years. The Brandywine’s Audrey Lewis hopes the…