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 Home > Government > Citizens' Handbook > Arts, Museums and Libraries

Museums

The Smithsonian Institution offers extensive online access to America's cultural resources. These include the Anacostia Museum, which features are programs and exhibitions that emphasize the contributions of African Americans to the history and culture of our country. The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery is devoted to exhibition, scholarship, education, and publication in the field of Asian art. The Arts and Industries Building is the second-oldest Smithsonian building on the Mall. The Cooper-Hewitt is America's National Design Museum. The Freer Gallery of Art houses an internationally recognized collection of Asian art and the world's largest group of works by American artist James McNeill Whistler. The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is a collection of 19th- and 20th-century paintings and sculptures. The National Air and Space Museum dramatizes the history of flight, space science, and space technology, and offers presentations both in the large screen Langley Theater and as well as in the Albert Einstein Planetarium.

The Smithsonian also includes the National Museum of African Art, which is devoted to the collection, study, and exhibition of African art. The National Museum of American Art houses a collection of some 36,500 American paintings, sculpture, folk art, photographs, and graphic arts. The National Museum of American History traces the American heritage through cultural, scientific, and technological exhibitions. The National Museum of the American Indian is located in the historic Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in New York City. The National Museum of Natural History is one of the world's great centers for the study of earth history, human cultures, and the diversity of the natural world. The National Portrait Gallery presents portraits of men and women who have made significant contributions to the historical and cultural development of the United States, including the leaders of our country, prominent politicians, sports heroes, artists, writers, and scientists.

The Smithsonian's National Postal Museum traces the personal, commercial, political, and social impact of the postal service on American life and is the largest and most comprehensive collection of its kind in the world. The National Zoo is home to thousands of animals representing some 500 species, many in settings that offer insights into social behavior and ecology. The Renwick Gallery features changing exhibitions of contemporary American crafts, as well as a selection of works, from 1900 to the present, from its permanent collection. The Smithsonian Center for Earth and Planetary Studies and National Air and Space Museum contains links to servers with images of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collision with Jupiter and the Space Shuttle Repository and Regional Planetary Image Facility. The Smithsonian Natural History Museum Web documents museum research and contains more than 120 million scientific specimens and cultural artifacts from around the world.


Libraries

The Library of Congress has a number of online exhibits and uses the Internet to make available selections of its print and photograph collections. It provides access to its collection through services such as LC MARVEL, which allows users to search on-line catalogs and databases.

National Library of Medicine is the world's largest library dealing with a single professional topic. It offers extensive online services dealing with clinical care, toxicology and environmental health, and basic biomedical research.


Arts

The Kennedy Center's ArtsEdge is a service that links the arts and education through technology. The General Service Administration's Cultural and Economic Affairs Division direct's the Arts-in-Architecture program, which seeks to incorporate fine art in the design of Federal buildings, and is responsible for all fine arts management of the national Fine Arts Collection.