Spend a fascinating Friday evening expanding your knowledge of the world of wine as you sip along with sommelier Erik Segelbaum in a series of delectable adventures. He explores offerings from both sides of South America’s Andes in an immersive program that includes a curated personal tasting kit to enhance the experience.
Jazz is more than just music: It is a living cultural narrative that mirrors the complexities, struggles, and triumphs of American society. The form has continually redefined itself, evolving with each generation to extend the boundaries of the genre. During Jazz Appreciation Month, the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra invites audiences to experience this vibrant story in sound in a concert that celebrates jazz in all its forms. Selections include music by Jelly Roll Morton, Sun Ra, and Leonard Bernstein.
The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, America’s first common carrier, was a pioneer in many components of railroading. None was more important than its innovations in propulsion. Rail historian James Reeves leads an exploration of more than a century of locomotive history at the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum in Baltimore. A Smithsonian Affiliate, the museum houses an outstanding collection of 19th-century locomotives—including an array on loan from the Smithsonian Institution.
If you’ve taken the studio arts class Gyotaku: The Japanese Art of Fish Printing, you are ready to try Hawaiian-style gyotaku. It includes printing in colorful inks and thin acrylics and adding color and texture with watercolor crayons and acrylic media.
Take a dive into the possibilities of alcohol inks as a component of your mixed-media arsenal. With intense, saturated color, alcohol inks offer many possibilities on a variety of surfaces, from tiles to paper.
Weave a whimsical fish-shaped pendant in this workshop. Pick up the techniques and learn what materials are needed to add your fish to a necklace or, if you make two fish, create a delightful pair of earrings.
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 Johann Sebastian Bach.
Pop culture is populated by plenty of fictional cephalopod and cephalopod-inspired characters, from Squidward of “SpongeBob SquarePants” to the heptapod aliens of Arrival. Whether these portrayals accurately represent the biology, anatomy, and behavior of the animals that inspired them is another question. Come find out how quickly Finding Dory’s Hank could regenerate his eighth arm and whether a kraken could really sink a ship as cephalopod expert Danna Staaf proves that truth can be stranger than fiction.
Smithsonian Associates speaker Paul Glenshaw returns to the Art + History series to look at great works of art in their historical context. This majestic landscape, created in 1868, is Bierstadt’s personal expression of his joyful first sight of the Sierra Nevada and a scene he thoroughly invented. The painting, along with Bierstadt’s many similar works, was a powerful lure for immigrants and settlers drawn by the promise of the American West, yet it also reveals the complicated legacy of Manifest Destiny. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1/2 credit)
René Lalique, the daring jeweler of Belle Époque Paris, revolutionized adornment by rejecting gemstone traditions and blending metals with enamel, horn, glass, and semi-precious stones. His nature-inspired creations—dragonflies, orchids, and nymphs—elevated jewelry to fine art, embodying Art Nouveau’s union of art and life. Collaborating with Sarah Bernhardt and elite patrons, Lalique gained acclaim at the 1900 Paris Exposition. Art historian Tosca Ruggieri’s illustrated lecture explores his evolution, techniques, patrons, and rarely seen masterpieces. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1/2 credit)
