The Affiliate | Spring 2010

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Spring 2010

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affiliate News about Smithsonian Affiliates

Rare Books from Smithsonian Join Tibetan Treasures at Rubin Museum of Art By Cara Seitchek

In February 2009, Rubin Museum of Art (RMA) Curatorial Assistant Tracey Friedman traveled to Washington, D.C., to view Smithsonian collections and select potential loans for an upcoming exhibition titled Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe. At the suggestion of Smithsonian Affiliations National Outreach Manager Jennifer Brundage, Friedman spent a day at the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology, pouring over a wide selection of books, eventually choosing six to illustrate the Western tale of the cosmos. “I was a bit skeptical because I had never heard of this library and felt the allure of other more well-known Smithsonian museums and

research centers,” she blogged on the Smithsonian Affiliations website. “To my pleasant surprise, the librarians took my topic and ran with it. I was impressed by the effort they had put into this scholarly research.” The Dibner Library, established in 1976 as the Smithsonian Institution’s first rare book library, contains 35,000 rare books and 2,000 manuscript groups that date from the 15th to the 19th centuries in the history of science and technology, including engineering, transportation, chemistry, mathematics, physics, electricity, and astronomy. Within its collections is a 1641 book by Galileo, Systema cosmicum, which was borrowed for the exhibition. continued page 7

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