This week, we’re delivering a few things that you won’t find on the takeout menu of any restaurant: optimism, care, and celebrations of creativity and achievement. We hope you enjoy digging in.

It’s all designed to make sure you continue to enjoy what you’ve come to value from Smithsonian Associates: programs and experiences that are entertaining, informative, eclectic, and insightful.

#EarthOptimism: A Focus on Hope

Mark the 50th anniversary of Earth Day along with the Smithsonian. Earth Optimism is a vision, a digital gathering, and a movement to shift the conservation conversation from one of doom and gloom to hope and optimism. Join free online events April 22 to 24 and watch the livestream to hear from more 100 experts. Earth Optimism focuses on success stories in conservation and sustainability with the goal to find inspiration in actions that are making a difference, even in the face of immense challenges.    

Curated With Love

At a moment when we all could use an extra-large dose of calm amid the chaos, the staff of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center is serving up just that. They created a digital Care Package filled with poems, audio and video meditations, music, films, and other cultural nutrients for times like this. The collection of creative offerings focuses on a range of approaches to addressing uncertainty, anxiety, and grief through vision, reflection, and healing. It’s definitely a package worth opening now.    

Visitors viewing Emanuel Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851), 1910 and 2019. Composite image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Met 150: A Glorious Anniversary

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s three Manhattan locations are always popular destinations for participants in Smithsonian Associates study tours. The Met’s 150th anniversary this year is being marked by an array of special programs and exhibitions—which at the moment are taking place online. Get a digital preview of the centerpiece exhibition, Making the Met: 1870–2020, a sweeping look at the evolution of this cultural treasure. Metmuseum.org opens the door to a rich array of resources for virtual visitors, including #MetKids, where young people can discover fun facts about works of art, hop in a time machine, watch behind-the-scenes videos, and get ideas for their own creative projects.    

“My Mom” 2019 Bonnie Fitzgerald Mosaic, Picassette

A Portrait of the Artist

Smithsonian Associates’ podcast partner Not Older Better has launched a series of interviews with artists, curators, and educators featured in Artists at Work, the annual Ripley Center exhibition that spotlights the Smithsonian’s own creative community. In the inaugural episode, producer and host Paul Vogelzang goes on a lively virtual gallery tour with mosaic artist Bonnie Fitzgerald, a popular instructor in our Studio Art program. This picassiette portrait of her mother—whose tiles include pieces of her dishes—is part of the 2020 exhibition. (Find some new uses for your own old crockery in Fitzgerald’s picassiette-technique class in the fall.)

Sign for C.J. Walker Authorized Agent, ca. 1930. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, gift of A'Lelia Bundles/Madam Walker Family Archives

Behind a Beauty-Business Rivalry

The new Netflix mini-series “Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker” gives the title character plenty of juicy fictionalized scenes with her longtime rival Annie Malone. The African American History and Culture Museum offers some real-life background on how both women rose to become leaders of successful companies in a segregated and highly sexist society. Walker’s granddaughter A’Lelia Bundles (who wrote the biography on which the series is based), spoke about Madam Walker’s mansion at Hillwood Museum’s Great Homes and Gardens lecture series. Take a look inside Madam Walker’s “dream of dreams” in a video of Bundles’ presentation. 

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