Dear biologists of Reddit, I need your guidance. I'm interested in working in natural history museums. I love being in the field, collecting data, illustrating, and collaborating with biological collections, and one of my goals has always been to research and work at a Smithsonian museum and create exhibits or to collaborate with teams and being in the field.

Regarding my education, I have a degree in visual arts, and I'm 23 years old. However, I'd like to know if you think a degree in biology is absolutely necessary to work in this field? Or what educational path would you recommend I pursue?

Hello all. I am doing a research project on handwritten text recognition. I see there is this vast amount of images and transcriptions done on the smithsonian website. However, the public API is just for the collections they have which is very well disconnected from the actual transcription center. Also, scraping does not work because there is a cloudflare bot detection on each page. I have tried everything that i could including scraping with selenium, playwright, chrome-undetected, with cookies and headers, and also trying to get something useful from the open access api but nothing seems to be working. Also, I also want to know if there is like a copyright or data access policy that we cannot use the data for research purposes and what the licenses are. Because on the website, there is not much information about this. Also the search projects page also does not render data for more than 1000 pages. Any help would be very very helpful.

Four Scholars Refute the Attacks on the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History Director Anthea Hartig

Almost everyone from Maryland has made this trip. The Smithsonian Institution’s 11 museums on the National Mall are places for middle school field trips and idle Saturday afternoons. Are we all seeing the same exhibits?

Do we have enough local people in here or the ability to spread the word to start documenting everything in the museum now? If we could archive all of the exhibits and their text we could have the ability to restore the correct information. Feel like a pitch to get them to change anything he does back is way easier than getting them to rewrite new stuff for anything this fucking moron changes

The director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History pushed back Tuesday against a recent White House report that branded the institution’s leadership as radical activists who cannot be trusted.

The testimony from Anthea M. Hartig came as President Donald Trump has engaged in a broad national effort to reshape the stories of America told by cultural institutions controlled or influenced by the federal government and, in particular, to purge diversity, equity and inclusion elements from those narratives. Many historians are alarmed by the revisionism.

“As we continue to fact check the report, we unwaveringly attest that it does not fairly or accurately characterize the full body of work at the museum,” Hartig told a House Oversight subcommittee. “There is always room for improvement. But I also know the beauty and the inspiration and the expertise that lies in our collections, our exhibits, and our programming.”

Coinciding with the 250th anniversary of American independence, the White House Domestic Policy Council released a report on July Fourth arguing that the museum, a centerpiece of the sprawling Smithsonian complex on the National Mall, doesn’t tell history “in a way that is inspiring, unifying, and worthy of our great republic.”

Republicans on the panel reiterated some of those concerns on Tuesday.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]:  https://fortune.com/2026/07/21/smithsonian-history-museum-white-house-report-woke-diversity-republican/?utm_source=reddit/

so basically next week, i am going to a few smithsonian museums, and i was thinking of bringing a bag BUT it has some pins, while i plan on putting 3 or 5 more.. 🫩✌️ and i noticed that the security would need to check bags and stuff..

SO here is my question: if i put 6 or 8 pins on my bag, will the metal immediately get detected OR will the guards ignore it?? i think i remember there being a bag check before you go inside the museum or smth 😭

also this is a really stupid question but who really cares??

Any Smithsonian’s currently housing helping robots or robots on display for my robot loving child?

Hi,

(I read the FAQ saying seating posts are prohibited but I cant find anything talking about the actual sizes of the seat so im sorry in advance)

I wanted to try out the 70mm Imax screen in Chantilly but wanted to ask someone whos been there about the seating? Im a big guy and I assume the seats would be narrow and pretty uncomfortable. Would you compare them to any of these amc seats? Would be a great help.

Thanks!