Athletes with disabilities have embraced the spirit of innovation to participate and excel in competitive sports by adapting equipment to suit their personal needs.
This website complements the museum's permanent exhibition Many Voices, One Nation and features contemporary Americans whose global origins and connections influence how they make their life, career, and community in the United States.
The exhibit served as a tour of imaginative tales and the scientific discoveries that inspired them when the science fiction genre was just beginning to come into its own.
This display includes objects that represent the technological innovations that helped meet challenges and, in turn, changed the forms of firefighting.
Together, the two galleries that made up the “First Ladies at the Smithsonian” exhibition featured a total of 24 dresses and more than 100 other objects, including portraits, White House china, personal possessions and related objects.
From the impact of new technologies, to the influence of social and cultural changes, the exhibition explores the transformation of food and drink in post-WWII America.
This is the first exhibition to explore the role played by visual images in shaping, influencing, and transforming the fight for civil rights in the United States.
In 2020, against the background of the nation's intersecting viral and racial crises, the museum created an outdoor display centered on the rights granted by the First Amendment.
This display shows a selection of the protest posters that Kameny and the Kameny Papers Project donated to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in 2006.
This display marked the centennial of one of the giants of the entertainment world, Frank Sinatra (1915-1998), illustrating his popular music, jazz, and motion picture career.
During the 2012 London Olympics, the then sixteen-year-old, known for her signature uneven bar routines, became the first African American woman to win gold in the individual all-around gymnastics competition.
Beginning eight days after the first shots of the American Civil War were fired and three days before his wedding, William Steinway’s remarkable diary bears witness to one of the most dynamic periods in American history.
The desk from General John J. Pershing’s war room, together with a full-size reproduction of the wall map on which he tracked troop movements, were featured in a landmark display for the Museum’s third floor east.