Secretary Lonnie Bunch on the New Memorial to Native American Veterans

In my family, Veterans Day was one of the most important days of the year. My father served in Germany at the end of World War II; every year, he took me into town to see the local parade. I was always captivated—not just by the tanks and the spectacle of the event (although I certainly enjoyed those), but by the people. As a kid growing up in the wake of the war, I was always moved by the sight of older men marching with a limp. I sensed that these people had sacrificed something for the country. Honoring them was not only about valor and victory; it meant recognizing that they carried a burden for my freedom.

To me, Veterans Day has always brought the unimaginable scope of war to a human scale. The day invites us to remember our history, to honor both those who served recently and those who served long ago. And it asks us to consider what service means in our own lives.

As a national museum complex, the Smithsonian has a unique responsibility to honor our veterans. Through exhibitions like “ We Return Fighting ” at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, we are telling lesser-known stories of those who fought for democracy abroad. And this November, the Smithsonian celebrates Veterans Day by marking the completion of the National Native American Veterans Memorial at the National Museum of the American Indian. Native peoples have served in the United States military since the American Revolution and continue to serve at one of the highest rates per capita of any population group. As commissioned by Congress, the memorial will recognize—for the first time on a national scale—the extraordinary service of these men and women and our shared obligation to honor this legacy.

I have always thought that you can tell an enormous amount about a nation by what it chooses to remember. This memorial and others to veterans, both on the National Mall and around the United States, are vital corners of our national memory. And although the parades of my childhood recede further into the past, we still find ways to honor those who join the ranks. This month, I reflect on the service and the sacrifice of generations of Americans: our family members, our friends, and those who bear us no relation but the common bond of country.

Here’s What’s New to Explore as Smithsonian Museums Reopen

Later this week, on September 25, the Smithsonian Institution will begin the next phase of its gradual reopening process by welcoming visitors back to two additional museums: the National Museum of American History and National Museum of the American Indian , both located on the National Mall. They will join six already-open museums and galleries, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum , Renwick Gallery , National Portrait Gallery , and National Museum of African American History and Culture , National Zoo in Rock Creek Park and the National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia.

Along the National Mall, visitors can now stroll the plaza surrounding the Hirshhorn Museum (which remains closed) and step down into the museum's sculpture garden, where two new monument artworks were recently installed. The Smithsonian Gardens surrounding the many museums are also welcoming visitors.

"Adjusting to our “new normal” has been challenging," Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch wrote in an email to staff last week as the Institution reopened the Smithsonian American Art Museum , Renwick Gallery , National Portrait Gallery , and National Museum of African American History and Culture , "but I am heartened that we are able to carefully bring the Smithsonian and all it has to offer back to the public, both traditionally and digitally."

New safety measures, like guidelines on floors, one-way paths and hand-sanitizing stations, are installed and visitors ages six and older are required to wear face masks. With the exception of the Renwick Gallery, visitors will need to reserve free timed-entry passes in advance, a measure instituted to limit crowding and ensure that visitors can enjoy the exhibitions and galleries with plenty of space for safe social distancing. Museum shops and cafes will also be closed. In a release, the Smithsonian announced the fooling safety measures, based on guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are now inplace at all locations:

Though museum doors were closed, curators were hard at work on some ambitious new offerings, and we’ve rounded up a few of the permanent exhibitions to check out, as well as some of the new shows to see at these four newly opened museums.

National Museum of American History

Constitution Avenue, NW between 12th and 14th Streets Open Friday to Tuesday, 11–4, enter on Constitution Avenue

Explore the histories of girls who pioneered social movements and fought the status quo in the National Museum of American History ’s new exhibition, “ Girlhood! (It's Complicated) , ” opening October 9, 2020. Five thematic sections, including education, work, news and politics, wellness, and fashion, showcase the lives of girls including Helen Keller and Naomi Wadler who advocated for social change and shaped history.

More than 60 artifacts that tell the story of the long-fought battle for women’s rights in the recently-opened exhibition, “ Creating Icons: How We Remember Woman Suffrage .” The exhibition includes both historical and contemporary artifacts, from Susan B. Anthony’s silk shawl to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s gavel .

Other exhibitions and artifacts on view include Abraham Lincoln’s top hat , the Greensboro Lunch Counter , the gowns of the First Ladies and the centuries-old Star-Spangled Banner . Visitors can also find nostalgic favorites, like Julia Child’s kitchen and the famous Ruby Slippers worn by Judy Garland in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz.

Online visitors can join the museums’ Food History Weekend, “ Food Futures: Striving for Justice ,” a virtual journey through diverse histories, cultures and cuisines on the weekend of October 15-17.

To maintain safe social distancing, select portions of The Price of Freedom: Americans at War will be closed.

National Museum of the American Indian:

4th Street & Independence Ave., S.W. Open Wednesday to Sunday, 11–4

The National Museum of the American Indian’s ongoing highly acclaimed exhibition, "Americans," is a must-see along with "The Great Inka Road: Engineering an Empire" and “' Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations ,” which tells the complicated history about the relationship between sovereign Indian Nations and the United States.

The museum’s location in New York City, the George Gustav Heye Center , remains closed.

Smithsonian American Art Museum

8th and G Streets NW Open Wednesday to Sunday, 11:30 -7, enter at G Street

At the a t the end of a long corridor at the Smithsonian American Art Museum beyond a pulled-back heavy burgundy brocade curtain, visitors will be treated to a full-scale mastodon skeleton that fills much of the rotunda-like space of the gallery. The fossil is the centerpiece of “Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature, and Culture,” which reveals how the American wilderness became emblematic of the country’s distinctive character. The signature show includes more than 100 paintings, sculptures, maps, artifacts and a mastodon skeleton.

Other shows on view include: “Picturing the American Buffalo: George Catlin and Modern Native American Artists;” “Sculpture Down to Scale: Models for Public Art at Federal Buildings, 1974-1985,” “Galleries for Folk and Self-Taught Art” and “Experience America.”

Renwick Gallery Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street NW Open Wednesday to Sunday, 10 to 5:30

At the Renwick Gallery , enjoy the colorful and ephemeral shapes of the show, “ Janet Echelman’s 1.8 Renwick ,” a series of sculptures made from fibers and wire, inspired by the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan. Also, on view “Connections: Contemporary Craft,” a look at the museum’s permanent collection with more than 80 artworks including the popular Ghost Clock by Wendell Castle and the curiously puzzling Bureau of Bureaucracy by Kim Schmahmann.

The museum will shortly present a new show “ Forces of Nature: Renwick Invitational 2020 ,” opening October 16 , which navigates the complex connections between the human world and the physical landscape and draws on a diverse group of artists and mediums.

National Portrait Gallery 8th and G Streets NW Open Wednesday to Sunday, 11:30-7, enter at G Street

On view at the National Portrait Gallery is the new show “ Visionary: The Cumming Family Collection ,” featuring hyper-realist paintings by artist Robert McCurdy, including likenesses of Muhammad Ali, Neil Armstrong, Jane Goodall, and Toni Morrison. Also newly installed is the exhibition “ Her Story: A Century of Women Writers ,” featuring the portraits of 24 of some of America’s most influential writers.

Visitors can take in the expansive 7-by-5 foot Danish masterpiece, Kunstdommere (Art Judges) , by Michael Ancher, unveiled in January. The hundred-year-old painting is the focus of the " Portraits of the World: Denmark " exhibition, capturing personalities from the fishing-village-turned-artists’-colony.

The portraits of former First Lady Michelle Obama by artist Amy Sherald and former President Barack Obama by Kehinde Wiley are on view, along with the museum’s permanent shows “America’s Presidents” and “The Struggle for Justice,” where a newly acquired portrait of the late Congressman John Lewis by Michael Shane Neal has been installed.

National Museum of African American History and Culture 1400 Constitution Ave NW Open Wednesday to Sunday, 11-4

The National Museum of African American History and Culture begins a limited reopening of its gallery spaces, offering 250 passes per day before amping up to 1,100 per day by the end of the month. The museum’s permanent exhibitions include “ Slavery and Freedom , ” “ A Changing America: 1968 and Beyond , “ Cultural Expressions , its Visual Arts Gallery, showcasing African American art, its Sports gallery and the cylindrical fountain in the Contemplative Court . Please see Smithsonian magazine's coverage of these showcase exhibitions in our special online feature “Breaking Ground.”

The Oprah Winfrey Theater and Corona Pavilion will remain closed, along with many of the museum’s popular interactives such as the Genealogy Database, the Neighborhood Record Sore and the Green Book display. Visitors will not be able to enter a number of the museum's larger objects such as the segregated Southern Railway Car and the Edisto Island Slave Cabin.

For more on ticketing and other new health meaures, the Smithsonian offers an easy online platform to access all necessary information.

How the Camera Introduced Americans to Their Heroines

Prior to the advent of photography, the main method of preserving one’s likeness was posing for a painting or sculpture—a decidedly expensive process accessible only to those in the upper echelons of society. But with Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre’s 1839 invention of the daguerreotype and subsequent advances in photographic technology, portraiture became increasingly democratized, enabling those with limited resources to acquire what theorist Roland Barthes once described as an “ irrefutable assertion ” of one’s own existence.

Compared with inherently interpretive mediums such as painting and sculpture, the camera appears to offer unparalleled objectivity. As Susan Sontag wrote in the seminal text On Photography , “Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire.” Indeed, photography’s claim to authenticity was one of the main attractions of early portraiture; rather than relying on a subjective artist to capture the intricacies of one’s appearance, subjects simply trusted the camera to produce a direct reflection of reality.

This trust, in most instances, was well-earned. Still, the camera remained more susceptible to manipulation than one might initially believe: Ann Shumard , senior curator of photographs at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery , explains that pictures are “always telling the story that the photographer wants to tell.” Even in the medium’s early days, she adds, daguerreotypists could “pose … sitters in such a way that they’re shown to their best advantage.”

Regardless of the medium’s debatable claim to objectivity, 19th-century snapshots serve as a valuable portal for peering into the past, offering a lifelike and arguably more accurate depiction of subjects than paintings and sculptures. The 12 photographs now on view in the exhibition, “ Women of Progress: Early Camera Portraits ,” at the National Portrait Gallery attest to one of the camera’s greatest strengths: lending visibility to women and other underrepresented groups at a crucial point in the ongoing struggle for equal rights.

In the United States, the rise of studio portrait photography during the 1840s and ‘50s coincided with a period of heightened visibility for women, who were emerging as prominent players in arenas including activism, literature, journalism and theater. Harriet Beecher Stowe ’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin , for example, sold 300,000 copies across the nation in the first year following its publication, while in 1855, comedic stage actress Laura Keene became the first female manager of a major New York City theater. These women, as well as others making their mark in antebellum America, increasingly found themselves in front of the camera, posing for portraits to be shared with the public or exchanged among loved ones as tokens of affection.

“ Women of Progress ” catalogues the stories of 13 such mid-19th century figures through the lens of ten daguerreotypes and two ambrotypes . Some of these individuals remain household names today— Beecher Stowe , Lucretia Mott and Dorothea Dix , for example. Others, including Mary Ann Brown Patten , the first woman to sail a clipper ship around Cape Horn; Charlotte Cushman , a popular actress who played both male and female parts; and Mary Ann Meade , a daguerreotypist in her own right—are lesser known. Regardless, the women are united by both their progressive bent and the fact that their camera likenesses survive as a direct result of the burgeoning popularity of photography.

An 1846 photograph of journalist Margaret Fuller falls into the first of these categories: In a letter to her brother, the writer explains that photographer John Plumbe Jr . asked her to pose for a portrait. The resulting image, a sixth-plate daguerreotype, depicts its sitter reading a hefty tome, seemingly so engrossed in the text that she remains unaware of the camera’s presence. The image was later displayed in Plumbe’s studio to attract future clientele.

The circumstances surrounding the production of an 1851 half-plate daguerreotype of abolitionist and women’s rights advocate Lucretia Mott are far hazier. Taken by photographer Marcus Aurelius Root , the portrait served as the basis for a widely circulated lithographic print by Boston-based artist Leopold Grozelier . Unlike daguerreotypes, lithographic prints could be produced in multiple copies. Lithographs also conveyed a greater variety of tones than earlier printing methods, allowing for more accurate copies of original works such as daguerreotypes and paintings.

Shumard says it’s possible Root’s photograph was taken with the direct intention of serving as the basis for Grozelier’s print. Whereas a daguerreotype sitting typically produced just one plate, lithographs could be easily mass-produced for public purchase.

The majority of photographs featured in the show are daguerreotypes , or silver-coated copper plates treated with iodine and bromine vapor to make them light sensitive. Early daguerreotypists captured images on these plates by posing subjects in front of a camera, making the exposure, developing with mercury vapor, and, finally, stabilizing or fixing by immersing in a special solution . ( Ambrotypes , comparatively, are underexposed photographic negatives on glass that appear positive when viewed against a dark background.) Although sitting for a studio portrait was a relatively lengthy process, the amount of effort required paled in comparison to posing for a painting or sculpture.

In addition to saving subjects’ time, daguerreotypes offered affordability and accuracy. As Shumard explains, portraits could be purchased in a variety of sizes , from petite sixteenth-plates to full-size ones measuring around 6.5 by 8.5 inches. Prices rose in accordance with size, beginning as low as 50 cents and reaching a premium of roughly $15. The most popular option—a sixth plate that measured 2.75 by 3.25 inches—cost between $3 to $3.50 at a time when a family’s weekly rent was likely upwards of $5.

“It’s not as though they’re giving these daguerreotypes away,” Shumard says, “but it’s so much cheaper than having a painted likeness made.”

The images on view were produced for a wide range of purposes. “Sometimes we know specifically why,” the curator notes, but with “others, we just have to make an assumption.”

To make copies of daguerreotypes , photographers placed original plates on specialized copy stands and then reshot the image—a process known as redaguerreotyping . Although these copies often lacked the level of contrast and subtle gradation seen in the original daguerreotypes, they were more accurate than lithographs and could be circulated on a smaller scale. “Women in Progress” features two copies—an 1852 picture of Beecher Stowe and a half-plate depicting sisters Mary and Emily Catherine Edmonson in a group photograph taken at an 1850 gathering of abolitionists protesting the impending passage of the new federal Fugitive Slave Law. The Edmonsons earned their freedom from slavery with the help of the Uncle Tom’s Cabin author’s brother, Henry Ward Beecher .

Shumard notes that t he group portrait had previously been exhibited in relation to two of its better-known sitters, abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Gerrit Smith . Now, however, the scene’s female subjects are the ones commanding visitors’ attention. “ In this instance,” she says, “ it’s really nice to be able to highlight the Edmonson sisters. ” The Beecher Stowe copy, Shumard says, stems from one of several studio sittings that yielded multiple plates ready for reproduction and distribution to an eager public.

The majority of daguerreotypes produced in mid-19th century America were designed for private rather than public consumption. “They are very intimate objects, [made] to be held in your hand and looked at,” says Shumard, or perhaps gifted to a loved one as a personal memento.

The medium’s capacity for conveying familiarity is apparent in an 1855 half-plate of abolitionist and women’s rights advocate Lucy Stone , who took the then-unheard of step of keeping her maiden name upon marrying husband Henry Blackwell. In the portrait, Stone’s features and clothing—including hand-colored peach-tinted flesh and a pink pigmented skirt—are accentuated in an attempt to make the keepsake image look more lifelike.

Other notable images not to be missed include an 1850 quarter-plate daguerreotype of poet Sarah T. Bolton , who urged readers to “Battle for the right. / And break the chains that bind / the mighty to the few,” and a sixth-plate ambrotype of Olive Oatman , a young woman who was abducted by Native Americans and spent five years in captivity, first as a slave of the tribe that murdered most of her family and later as an adopted member of the Mohave people.

Oatman’s 1856 return attracted national attention. She was the subject of an exaggerated 1857 account, Life Among the Indians: Captivity of the Oatman Girls , and traveled the country on a publicity lecture circuit. Her likeness, meanwhile, was cemented in the public’s imagination by blue markings tattooed across the length of her chin. This facial tattoo, applied with cactus ink, is just discernible in the exhibition ambrotype, which is among the National Portrait Gallery’s most recent acquisitions.

Referencing the Oatman and Brown Patten ambrotypes, Shumard concludes, “ I’m so excited that we have these ambrotypes of [women] who are not household names but . . . who experienced such trying circumstances and managed to survive. ”

“ Women of Progress: Early Camera Portraits ,” a project of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative , Because of Her Story , is on view at the National Portrait Gallery on the museum's first floor through May 31, 2020.