photo album with soiled, cream colored leather cover with "Photo Album" on front and a sticker that reads "Holidays 1939-1949'; black paper pages; photographs and postcards, most adhered to page using black photo corners; travel to florida, new york; beach; Belonged to Patricia Anne Cohen, formerly actor Patricia English
blue satin cloth bound album with gold embellishments; "Holidays 1950-1953" handwritten on sticket on front of spine; bound with a single black string; black paper pages; one blank page at end of album; Belonged to Patricia Anne Cohen, formerly actor Patricia English
black bound photograph album with gold embellishment on cover; back cover has separated from remainder of album; plastic covered pages with color photographs; map of Epcot Center at Walt Disney World loose in album; brochure for Universal Studios loose in album; map of Sea World loose in album; Belonged to Patricia Anne Cohen, formerly actor Patricia English
Poster advertising the 1975 International Women’s Year Conference in Mexico City. The conference was sponsored by the United Nations and marked the start of the International Women’s Decade.
To teach children basic arithmetic, nineteenth century teachers used numeral frames like this one. They resemble a Russian abacus, in that beads move crosswise. However, each bead represents a unit digit (unlike the abacus, where beads in different rows or columns have different place values).
Soldiers returning from Russia after the Napoleonic Wars introduced this kind of abacus into France. In England, teacher and educational reformer Samuel Wilderspin promoted its use. Educators from both France and England brought it to the U. S., where it began to sell commercially in the late 1820s.
Some numeral frames were purchased and others homemade. The device was used to teach counting, simple addition, multiplication, and fractions. Most early numeral frames had 12 or 10 beads in a row. This one has 8 parallel copper wires, each with 18 beads. The instrument was used in Mexico. It came to the Smithsonian in 1979. There are no maker’s marks.
Reference: P. A. Kidwell, Amy Ackerberg-Hastings, and D. L. Roberts, Tools of American Mathematics Teaching, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008, pp. 87-104.
Recruiting poster printed with "Volunteers for Mexico."
General History
Broadsides (single sheets of paper usually printed on one side) served as public announcements or advertisements soon after the beginning of printing. Originally issued primarily by governmental, religious, and political bodies, broadsides were later used for advertisements, programs, notices, ballad verses, elegies, and comments on contemporary events. They were read, handed out, or posted in prominent locations and were an inexpensive way to reach a wide audience. Broadsides are documents created for a specific purpose and usually discarded once that initial purpose is accomplished. Broadsides are an important resource for many disciplines because the images and slogans provide snapshots of the events, ideas, and attitudes of their era.
During wartime one common use of the broadside format was for recruiting purposes. Broadsides are considered “ephemera,” that is, items were produced with no intention of preservation. Most were meant to be posted and then discarded when they had served their purpose. That is what makes so many broadsides rare, if not unique.
This straw sombrero was worn by actor Mel Blanc portraying “Sy, The Little Mexican” on Jack Benny’s radio and television programs in the 1950s. The character, said to be from Tijuana, answered Benny’s questions with a monosyllabic “Si” or other variations of the word in a Mexican accent with a deadpan stare.
"Una piedra en el camino me enseño que mi destino era votar y votar" (A stone in the road taught me that my destiny is to vote and vote" - a customized quote from the song "El Rey (the King)" by famed Mexican singer and cultural icon Vicente Fernandez. A sketch of Fernandez, top half of poster, is drawn.
Pair of jeans, part of a costume ensemble worn by Mariska Hargitay as Olivia Benson in Law & Order: SVU.
This costume was worn by Mariska Hargitay in the role of Olivia Benson on the long-running NBC police procedural television series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. The costume was used in production of episode #25008, titled “Third Man Syndrome,” which originally aired March 21, 2024, episode 8 of season 25 of the series. Law & Order: SVU is a spinoff of the original series Law & Order (1990-2010), following New York City Police detectives Benson and Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni) as they investigate and prosecute crimes of a sexual nature, including rape, sexual violence, child sexual abuse, and human trafficking. Episode plots are sometimes drawn from real life crimes that have been reported in the media. The series, like its predecessor created by Dick Wolf and originally produced by Wolf Entertainment Studios USA, premiered on NBC on September 20, 1999. Now produced by Universal Television, the series became the longest-running primetime live-action series on American television at the beginning of its 21st season in 2019, which made Olivia Benson the longest running drama character on prime-time television.
Hargitay’s portrayal of Benson is a notable television representation of female law enforcement officers, a demographic underrepresented on television’s male-dominated police procedural series. Benson’s character defies many of television’s popular female character tropes: she is not in a long-term romantic relationship, balances her job with being a mother to her adoptive son Noah beginning in season 12, and works in the field rather than in a subordinate position. Benson eventually rises to the rank of Captain as the Commanding Officer of the Special Victims Unit, demonstrating her character’s success despite the lack of a male counterpart like Stabler.
Law & Order: SVU is significant not only for its popularity and longevity, but also the critical acclaim it has received and its influence on the medium. The series has received 108 award nominations, winning 33 awards, including a 2006 Primetime Emmy Award for Mariska Hargitay for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. The win made Hargitay the first performer from any of the Law & Order franchise series to win an Emmy, and the first to win a Golden Globe, for an acting role on the show. The series frequently grapples with significant political and social issues including sexual preference, gender identity, domestic violence, human trafficking, and civil rights. Benson is depicted as a passionate advocate for victims, as she was driven to join the special victims unit due to her own life as the child of a rape victim. Hargitay is herself a survivor of rape, became a certified rape counselor, and in 2004, after receiving numerous letters from women who had experienced sexual violence and abuse, established the Joyful Heart Foundation, an organization to provide support to survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, elder abuse and human trafficking.
This costume was worn in the Law & Order: SVU episode “Third Man Syndrome,” written by Kathy Dobie and Candace Sanchez MacFarlane and directed by Norberto Barba. The episode focuses on the police team’s investigation of an assault and homicide perpetrated against two Latino men by two white men who suspect them to be homosexual. The SVU team pursues prosecution as a hate crime, which requires Benson to convince a home-bound witness to testify. The episode was based on a real-life crime committed in 2008, when two brothers from Ecuador, Jose and Romel Sucuzhanay, were attacked in Brooklyn. A man named Keith Phoenix witnessed the brothers walking arm-in-arm and leaning close to each other, common gestures of friendly intimacy among men in Latino cultures, but misinterpreted by Phoenix, who believed that they were a gay couple. Phoenix and an accomplice, Hakim Scott, attacked the men with a beer bottle and aluminum baseball bat. Jose, who sustained injuries from a baseball bat, was brought to a hospital in critical condition and eventually succumbed to his wounds. Police discovered that witnesses had heard Phoenix and Scott voice anti-gay and anti-Latino slurs before the assault and decided to bring hate crime charges against the men. Phoenix was convicted of murder as a hate crime and sentenced to life in prison on Aug. 5, 2010. His cohort, Hakim Scott, was convicted the month before of manslaughter.
Boxed sample of a nest of wild silkworm cocoons, as left behind after the butterfiles emerged. "Mexican Wild Silk. Nest of Silk Spun By The Social Caterpillars of a Butterfly, Eucheria Socialis (Westwood), Pieridae. This material was used in this form as paper by the Aztecs before the Spanish Conquest. Oaxaca, Mexico." (taken from object label on box).
Part of large collection of plant and animal fibers acquired by the US National Museum in support of research and commerce by the US textile industry.