Cultures & Communities - Overview
Furniture, cooking wares, clothing, works of art, and many other kinds of artifacts are part of what knit people into communities and cultures. The Museum’s collections feature artifacts from European Americans, Latinos, Arab Americans, Asian Pacific Americans, African Americans, Gypsies, Jews, and Christians, both Catholics and Protestants. The objects range from ceramic face jugs made by enslaved African Americans in South Carolina to graduation robes and wedding gowns. The holdings also include artifacts associated with education, such as teaching equipment, textbooks, and two complete schoolrooms. Uniforms, insignia, and other objects represent a wide variety of civic and voluntary organizations, including youth and fraternal groups, scouting, police forces, and firefighters.
"Cultures & Communities - Overview" showing 893 items.
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Poster, Cleveland: Many Peoples One Language
- Description
- Waves of non–English–speaking European immigrants flooded the cities of industrial America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Local governments and civic groups sought to encourage immigrants to learn to speak, read, and write English. This 1917 poster from the Americanization Committee of the Cleveland Board of Education was posted in schools in an attempt to reach immigrant parents through their children.
- An appeal to attend free evening English classes appears on this poster in six languages : Italian, Hungarian, Slovenian, Polish, Yiddish, and English. Cleveland's factories, steel mills, port facilities, and assembly plants teemed with the new working–class arrivals from central and eastern Europe. On the eve of the American entry into World War I, nationalistic passions were rising and new immigrants were especially encouraged to "become American" by learning English and preparing for American citizenship.
- The 29" x 43" poster is a J. H. Donahey publication printed by the Artcraft Company of Cleveland, Ohio.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1917
- maker
- Artcraft Co.
- ID Number
- 1986.0799.01
- accession number
- 1986.0799
- catalog number
- 1986.0799.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
"In-Out" Basket
- Description
- The process of manufacturing such baskets is called "sewing," but it is actually a process of binding and coiling long strands of grass. In the wetlands, two kinds of grasses are used; "sweetgrass," and more recently, black rush, also known as "bullrush." Strips of oak wood, or palmetto fronds are used to bind together long bundles of grass, which are then coiled into a particular shape. Makeshift tools, such as broken-off spoons, flattened nails, or cow ribs are used for the coiling and binding process. Sometimes, colored grasses or pine needles are used in the show baskets, although the use of sweetgrass, bulrush, and palmetto is standard.
- Today, the role of the men and boys is to gather the materials, the women do the weaving and market the baskets. Until recently, baskets were sold from family-operated roadside stands, but increasingly, they are sold at county fairs and cultural festivals. Many of the older women regarded basketmaking as a carefully guarded community secret, but many of the younger women give basketmaking seminars to people from outside of the communities. The women of an earlier generation were not always comfortable with the term "gullah", younger women tend to recognize its historical and cultural value.
- Today, the baskets are for domestic and decorative purposes, rather than agricultural use, and there is a much wider variety of shapes than when baskets were used on the plantations. Some coil weaving produces wall decorations, ladies' hats, and men's caps. Although there are no fixed rules for terminology, certain shapes are often given specific names. Some of the named shapes are for placing utensils inside the baskets.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1970
- ID Number
- CL*298252.18
- collector/donor number
- C.26.1.
- accession number
- 298252
- catalog number
- 298252.18
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Acupuncture Instrument Set
- Description
- Acupuncture has gone in and out of fashion over the centuries in both China and the West. Part of a 2,000-year-old system of medicine that originated in China, acupuncture spread across Asia and the world with the migration of Asian peoples. In 2002, there were about 15,000 licensed acupuncturists in the United States.
- Despite its continuous currency in Asian cultures, acupuncture did not gain a wide audience in the United States until the 1960s and 1970s. The revival of interest came on the heels of reports from several American physicians traveling in China, New York Times reporter James Reston's dramatic 1971 acupuncture treatment following an emergency appendectomy while in China, and Richard Nixon's historic 1972 visit.
- Acupuncture involves the application of very small needles inserted at specific points on the skin. The needles work to balance the body's flow of qi (pronounced chee). According to Taoist religious teachings, qi encompasses the fundamental life force that flows throughout the universe.
- As practiced today, acupuncture is an East-West hybrid. Its transnational character emerged in the early 20th century as Western influence became more pronounced in medical schools in mainland China in the decades before the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC). In those years of the Chinese Republic, traditional Chinese medicine was discouraged as intellectual elites pressed for modernization and practitioners felt imperialist pressures from the West and Japan. After 1949, the communist PRC regime encouraged traditional Chinese medicine, and the system developed as understood today through the establishment of several medical schools and training sites. Later, traditional practitioners cautiously welcomed Western, allopathic knowledge in the 1960s and 1970s as overseas Chinese, trained in the West, returned home with scientific ideas.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1988
- maker
- Hwa To Brand
- ID Number
- 1989.0196.082
- catalog number
- 1989.0196.082
- accession number
- 1989.0196
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Signboard, Pass the Acid Test
- Description
- In the mid-1960s, novelist and counterculture guru Ken Kesey used this 38" x 68" plywood sign as an announcement board and invitation card to promote the activities of his "Merry Pranksters" (an itinerant band of free thinkers) during their memorable cross-country rides on an old bus named "Further." Kesey and his band drove Further from northern California to Washington, D.C., and New York, ostensibly to attend Kesey book parties. In the process they used the bus rides to encourage people to discuss anything with them, to try anything, to perform civic pranks of various sorts, and to otherwise call attention to alternative ways of thinking about the issues of the day.
- Like the bus, the sign is a colorful smorgasbord of offerings from the Pranksters and visitors to the bus. Splashes of day–glo paint are overlaid with newspaper clippings, political cartoons, doodles, yarn, and the names of influential West Coast figures from the counterculture movements of the 1950s and 1960s. During a 1992 visit to the Kesey farm in rural Oregon to examine the remains of Further, the Smithsonian found this signboard in the loft of a chicken coop, covered with dust and feathers. A family of foxes occupied the rear seat of Further, moldering in a field, so Kesey decided to donate this sign instead of the bus.
- Date made
- 1960s
- user
- Kesey, Ken
- ID Number
- 1992.0413.01
- accession number
- 1992.0413
- catalog number
- 1992.0413.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
pin, The Names Project
- Description
- Started in San Francisco by Cleve Jones, the NAMES Project offered a collective expression of grief. Its Memorial Quilt is composed of handmade panels dedicated to those who have died of AIDS.
- date made
- n.d.
- maker
- unknown
- ID Number
- 2010.0130.25
- catalog number
- 2010.0130.25
- accession number
- 2010.0130
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Engraved plate, Discovery of the New World
- Description
- The engraved copper plate "Discovery of the New World" was used to print illustration number six in Nova Typis Transacta Navigatio, an account of Columbus's expeditions published in Austria in 1621. The plate was engraved by Wolfgang Kilian (1581–1662), one of a distinguished family of artists and engravers from Augsburg, Germany. The scene represents European explorers being welcomed at a feast by Native Americans.
- The publication was dedicated to Caspar Plautius, Abbot of the Benedictine monastery of Seitenstetten, where the book was published. Plautius also has been suggested as the author of the work, which treats the exploration and discovery of the Americas and the role of Benedictine priests as missionaries. The Benedictines, under Father Bernardo Boyl or Buell, were sent by the King of Spain to Christianize the native peoples of the New World. The plate came to the Smithsonian in 1905 from the Seitenstetten monastery, through Prof. P. Joseph Schock. Several impressions were printed from the plate in 1913.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1621
- maker
- Kilian, Wolfgang
- ID Number
- GA*07252
- catalog number
- 07252
- accession number
- 45209
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Weber Upright Piano
- Description (Brief)
- Albert Weber became Steinway’s principal competitor in the 1870s, just as the Chickering company began to falter. Weber made few technical innovations. He simply made extremely fine pianos like this 1876 upright and sold them at fair prices. Beautifully decorated by Herter Brothers, furniture designers of New York, this instrument helped Weber challenge Steinway at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in 1876. The piano is serial number 9957, and has a compass of AAA-c5, tape-check upright action (probably not original), felt hammers, single-, double-, and triple-strings, cross-strung, 2 pedals: “soft” and dampers, a double iron frame, and an ebonized case with inlaid designs and gilded banding.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1876
- maker
- Weber
- decorator
- Herter Brothers
- ID Number
- 1980.0360.01
- catalog number
- 1980.0360.01
- accession number
- 1980.0360
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Page from the Koran
- Description
- This page is one side of a double-sided sheet from a copy of the Koran, a collection of revelations to the Prophet Mohammed that forms the basis of the Islamic religion. Information within the book indicates that the scribe worked on it for 22 years and completed it in 1207 A.D. The black letters are in Arabic and the smaller red letters are in Persian. The book was found in Tehran, Iran, in 1952, and this sheet was donated to the Smithsonian Institution from the Biblical Library of Stanley S. Slotkin.
- In the Islamic tradition, representations of human or animal figures are discouraged, resulting in a fluid calligraphic style often incorporating geometric and floral designs.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1207 AD
- previous owner
- Slotkin, Stanley S.
- ID Number
- 1981.0253.59
- accession number
- 1981.0253
- catalog number
- 1981.0253.59
- 81.0253.59
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Face Vessel
- Description
- The tradition of shaping human likenesses on ceramic vessels is thousands of years old. Face vessels held different meanings in different cultures around the world. Some were probably used in burial rituals, others satirized the person whose features were captured in clay, and still others were made just for fun.
- The earliest face vessels known to have been produced by white southern potters were probably not made until the end of the 1800s. White potters working in the Edgefield area in the mid-1800s may have seen the slave-made vessels and taken the idea with them as they moved out of South Carolina.
- Like many southern pottery families, the Brown family encompasses a line of potters generations long. The Browns began making pottery in west-central Georgia by the mid-1800s before migrating east to the Atlanta area after the Civil War. The family spread from there to North and South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas.
- Starting in the 1960s, a growing interest in southern face vessels as examples of 20th-century folk art prompted collectors, historians, and cultural institutions to seek out and encourage the potters who produce them. This piece, in the middle, was made by a member of the Brown family in North Carolina, and donated to the Smithsonian by Ralph Rinzler and his wife. Working for the Smithsonian's Office of Folklife Programs, Rinzler was instrumental in the rediscovery and popularization of face vessels.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1967-1968
- maker
- Brown Pottery
- ID Number
- 1981.0287.5
- accession number
- 1981.0287
- catalog number
- 1981.287.5
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Face Vessel
- Description
- The tradition of shaping human likenesses on ceramic vessels is thousands of years old. Face vessels held different meanings in different cultures around the world. Some were probably used in burial rituals, others satirized the person whose features were captured in clay, and still others were made just for fun.
- The earliest face vessels known to have been produced by white southern potters were probably not made until the end of the 1800s. White potters working in the Edgefield area in the mid-1800s may have seen the slave-made vessels and taken the idea with them as they moved out of South Carolina.
- Like many southern pottery families, the Brown family encompasses a line of potters generations long. The Browns began making pottery in west-central Georgia by the mid-1800s before migrating east to the Atlanta area after the Civil War. The family spread from there to North and South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas.
- Starting in the 1960s, a growing interest in southern face vessels as examples of 20th-century folk art prompted collectors, historians, and cultural institutions to seek out and encourage the potters who produce them. This piece, on the left, was made by a member of the Brown family in North Carolina, and donated to the Smithsonian by Ralph Rinzler and his wife. Working for the Smithsonian's Office of Folklife Programs, Rinzler was instrumental in the rediscovery and popularization of face vessels.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1967-1968
- maker
- Brown Pottery
- ID Number
- 1981.0287.6
- accession number
- 1981.0287
- catalog number
- 1981.287.6
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
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