Learn from an orchid-care expert how orchids grow in their native environments and beginner care instructions to keep your orchids blooming.
Discover how visual art can inspire creative writing and how writing can offer a powerful way to experience art. Join Mary Hall Surface, the founding instructor of the National Gallery of Art’s popular Writing Salon, for a course of three online workshops that explore essential elements of writing and styles through close looking, word-sketching, and imaginative response to prompts. The sessions spotlight a diverse range of visual art chosen to inspire writers of all experience levels to deepen their process and practice. This writing session is inspired by The Mother and Sister of the Artist by Berthe Morisot.
Discover how visual art can inspire creative writing and how writing can offer a powerful way to experience art. Join Mary Hall Surface, the founding instructor of the National Gallery of Art’s popular Writing Salon, for a course of three online workshops that explore essential elements of writing and styles through close looking, word-sketching, and imaginative response to prompts. The sessions spotlight a wide range of visual art chosen to inspire writers of all experience levels to deepen their process and practice.
The 49th season of the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society features musical masterpieces from the early 17th century to the middle of the 20th, played on some of the world’s most highly prized musical instruments in an 8-concert series. This concert features music of Haydn and Brahms with the Smithsonian Academy Orchestra.
Expectations have always been high when it comes to the British line of succession, says historian Siobhan Clarke, and the birth of a royal baby could shape an empire. She explores the historical significance of these important infants from the 15th century to today, examining how the fertility, pregnancies, and childbirths of queens have shaped politics—and why the nation’s history has often hung on a tiny heartbeat.
Written nearly 2,000 years ago, Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations remains one of the most profound, practical guides to living with integrity, resilience, and perspective and cultivating one’s self. Philosopher Samir Chopra leads an exploration of this foundational text of Stoicism through a historically embedded reading of passages, with a view to developing a practice of Stoic principles.
For centuries, mariners spun tales of gargantuan waves in the open ocean, annihilating walls of water measuring 100 feet high or taller. Though once dismissed as impossible, new evidence has led oceanographers to determine that we have underestimated how the seas behave at their most ferocious. Journalist and author Susan Casey provides a look at these colossal, ship-swallowing rogue waves—noting that as scientists scramble to understand this phenomenon, others, including extreme surfers, view the giant waves as the ultimate challenge.
Curator Patricia LaBounty of the Union Pacific Railroad Museum explores how U.S. presidents used trains to connect with communities from the 1830s to the 1940s. Beginning with Lincoln, railroads were vital for travel, campaigning, and even funeral processions. Presidential policies promoted nationwide rail access, with train cars carrying everything from coal to cantaloupe—and sometimes commanders-in-chief.
