Smithsonian.com

Shards of history turned up at the site of the new National Museum of African American History and Culture after a team of archaeologists spent three hot August weeks sifting through dirt as part of a mandated environmental impact study. The recovered artifacts, some pieces of pottery and lamps, and possibly some construction material from the building of the Washington Monument, will be cleaned, analyzed and eventually archived among the new museum’s collections.

Project executive Curtis Davis explained that the area had been used as a dumping ground in the late 19th century, as city planners called for infilling of the swampy waters that once covered the site. “You can think of it as a landfill,” he says. “Much of what was unearthed has not been fully identified yet.”

The museum, which is slated to open in 2015, has crossed a hurdle, says Davis, and no major impediments stand in the way of its plans to select an architect and designer by as early as next fall.

During the colonial era, the site was part of a slave-holding plantation. The area later supported slave markets. “For African Americans, this place has a particular resonance,” says Fleur Paysour, the museum’s spokesperson. The archaeologists turned up little, however, in the way of historical evidence of that time.

“It is hard to recover material that supports evidence of the condition of slave’s lives during the periods of Colonial Washington, the Civil War and Reconstruction,” says Davis. “The usual archaeological evidence ascribed to ownership is difficult because slaves were property and didn’t typically own property.”

(Courtesy of Charles LeeDecker)

Check out the American Cookbook Project sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service. The traveling show is called “Key Ingredients,” which according to the press release, is about the “historical, regional and social traditions that merge in everyday meals at the American table.”

It’s a kick to peruse the Top 10 Cookbook Entries (site visitors can vote on their favorites). Garnering the most votes is “Blinn,” a Polish potato pie recipe submitted by a woman from St. Charles, Minnesota, identifying herself only as “Karen.” Proving that there’s more to food than calories, Karen writes: “I have fond memories of my grandmother making this when I was a child.” And she adds, “I can’t believe at the age of 14 she kissed her parents goodbye at the train station in Poland, knowing she might not ever see them again (and she didn’t) to come to this country for a better life.”

My favorite tongue-twister of a recipe is Mom’s Zwiebelkuchen. It’s an onion tart, or quiche. This just might be what I’ll make for dinner tonight.

Today marks the 40th anniversary of human-powered flight. On August 23, 1977, pilot Bryan Allen flew the Gossamer Condor (well, it seems he rather pedaled it) a momentous 7 minutes and 27.5 seconds over Shafter, California.

The 24-year-old pilot was a well-conditioned bicycle racer. And the pedals drove a bicycle chain that turned a propeller. The contraption, which has a 96-foot wingspan and is made mostly out of Mylar, cardboard and Styrofoam, traveled a total of 1.35 miles and won a $14,000 prize for its Pasedena designers Paul MacCready and Peter Lissaman.

The Gossamer Condor now hangs out with the Wright Brother’s first airplane and the Apollo 11 space capsule at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.

(Courtesy of Eric Long)

The name didn’t ring any bells.

The scholars and collectors attending the opening of “Earl Cunningham’s America” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum all knew of this artist and his work. But for us Ordinary Joes, this guy’s body of work was a major discovery.

Or perhaps we were all just suffering the end-of-vacation blues. Because to admire a Cunningham is to fall for coastal scenes of nostalgic idylls and fanciful visions. The brightly colored paintings are embellished with Viking ships and 19th-century schooners, all looking as naturally a part of the surrounds as a robin in the garden at springtime.

“Wishful memories,” is how curator Virginia Mecklenburg characterized the 50 folk art paintings on view. Cunningham made them over a lifetime of travels along the Eastern seaboard from Edgecomb, Maine, where he was born in 1893 to St. Augustine, Florida, where he tragically took his own life in 1977.

His name is new to us now largely because he hated to sell his works. He called them “his brothers and his sisters.” He ran a curio shop on St. George Street in St. Augustine and anyone even broaching the subject of purchasing one of his paintings was likely to have been tossed from the shop.

One stubborn admirer, Marilyn Mennello from Winter Park, Florida, managed to convince Cunningham to sell just one work. And after his death, Mennello spent decades finding, collecting and assembling a body of his works–the core of the exhibition now on view at SAAM.

For admirers following now in Mennello’s footsteps, take heart, there may be more of them out there. A quick check on eBay, though, and the only Earl Cunningham there is a Reggae artist. Not the same guy.

(Courtesy of the collection of Mr. Ross L. Silverbach) 

Introducing Around the Mall—a new Smithsonian.com blog covering scenes and sightings from the Smithsonian museums and beyond.

About the primary bloggers:

Beth Py-Lieberman, associate editor for Smithsonian magazine, has reported on the Institution for more than two decades.

Jess Blumberg has written for Inc. magazine, The Daily Record, Baltimore magazine, The Baltimore Sun and Baltimore’s City Paper.

Megan Gambino, editorial assistant for Smithsonian magazine, has covered the arts scene for a Vermont weekly and has written for Outside and Outside’s GO.

Other magazine contributors will post, too.