The museum celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Girl Scouts with this special case highlighting the organization's history from its early years to today through uniforms, camping, community activities, and more.
With a design inspired by zines, the Girlhood exhibition featured five story sections: Education (Being Schooled), Wellness (Body Talk), Work (Hey, Where’s My Girlhood?), Fashion (Girl’s Remix), plus seven biographical interactives stories, A Girl’s Life.
Racial segregation was still legal in the United States on February 1, 1960, when four African American college students sat down at this Woolworth counter in Greensboro, North Carolina.
The Gunboat Philadelphia exhibition has been reinterpreted and updated to include its recovery in 1935, a history of its display at Lake Champlain as well as early preservation and acquisition by the museum.
Large voting machines from the late 19th century and an assortment of 19th and 20th century voting boxes and rally signs from current candidates were included in the exhibit.
In June 1969, LGBTQ+ community members resisted a police raid at the Stonewall Inn, a bar in lower Manhattan. The museum marked this 50th anniversary with a display featuring objects from its collections.
Mayhem, on exhibit in 1 West (the “Innovation Wing”) is the first artificial intelligence cyber defense system designed specifically to thwart attacks on our increasingly interconnected—and vulnerable—devices.
Inventing in America, a collaboration with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, focuses on inventions and innovators of the past and present, including Samuel Morse, Alexander Graham Bell, and Thomas Edison.
From 1908 to 1926 some 10,000 patent models were transferred from the U.S. Patent Office to the U.S. National Museum at the Smithsonian Institution. The models are now here at the National Museum of American History.
With its highly interactive and engaging activities created especially for families, "Invention at Play" focused on similarities between the ways children and adults play and the creative skills and processes used by inventors.
Brief video interviews, complemented by archival materials and artifacts, put the focus on the inventors and their processes, telling their stories in their own words.