Smithsonian Scholars Pick Their Favorite Books of 2019 | Books - Smithsonian.com

Reading proved a bedrock in a year that saw a new Smithsonian secretary and celebrations of dinosaurs, Apollo 11 and women’s history, says Beth Py-Lieberman, museums editor, covering exhibitions, events and happenings at the Smithsonian Institution.

Photo: Shaylyn Esposito

This year, the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s founding director Lonnie Bunch was tapped to become the Smithsonian’s 14th Secretary. In his new role Secretary Bunch promises to pursue a Smithsonian where the nation can look “for guidance, for information and for clarity.”

At the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, in anticipation of the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, historians offered that kind of clarity to the complex racial undertones in the historic quest for universal suffrage. The Portrait Gallery also announced the winners of the triennial Outwin Portrait Competition, yielding works that touched on LBGTQ rights and activism, the Black Lives Matter movement and gun violence.

Bringing clarity and guidance, the Smithsonian in 2019 dispersed a plethora of scholarship. At the National Museum of American History, curators took a deep dive into the history of the transcontinental railroad for its 150th anniversary. There, public historians also considered the role of the housewife across time and the confluence of our nation’s immigration policies on entrepreneurs in the food, wine and craft beer industries...

Books celebrating all of these ventures came out in droves from Secretary Bunch’s A Fool’s Errand, to Apollo’s Legacy from the Air and Space Museum’s scholar Roger G. Launius. Dinosaur curator Matthew T. Carrano and Kirk R. Johnson, the director of the National Museum of Natural History offered a beautiful collection of the paleoart crafted by the artist Jay Matternes. And the Portrait Gallery's Kate Clarke Lemay edited Votes for Women: A Portrait of Resistance...   Here are the titles they recommend:

Read more...

Source: Smithsonian.com