Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service's Blog

Suited for Space: Last Words from the Curator

Only a woman who has spent 25 years at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum (NASM) could describe the manned space program as “government employees traveling on government time using government equipment.” Or observe that we wouldn’t have gotten to the moon without duct tape and Velcro. Or call her favorite spacesuit by its first name, the “Jack” (for Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison "Jack" Schmitt).

Amanda Young, who will retire at the end of the month, took a somewhat fragmented set of spacesuits, helmets, boots, and gloves, with little documentation and no parameters for their care, and transformed them into an organized collection of historically important artifacts. Highlights of the collection are the “flown” and developmental suits, which, she says, “show how we got from there to here.” It took 10 years to organize and catalogue what eventually became more than 1,000 spacesuits, pressure suits, and components (gloves, boots, and helmets), including most of the spacesuits worn during the Apollo, Gemini, and Mercury missions. Since then her focus has primarily been on spacesuit preservation, storage, and display.

"The problem with displaying spacesuits is that they’re very heavy, fragile, and hard to move,” says Young. “Moreover, the number of suits available to lend has shrunk because of their condition, and very few venues outside of NASM can meet our stringent humidity, temperature, and light requirements.” The suits aren’t fragile because they’ve been to space and back, she explains, but because they’re made of a variety of natural and man-made materials–like copper, rubber, and plastics–that “don’t play nicely together” and so deteriorate at an alarming rate.

The challenges of traveling spacesuits shaped the upcoming exhibition Suited for Space, a collaboration between SITES and NASM that begins its national tour in April 2011. Because the collection cannot travel, it has been thoroughly photographed, providing amazing and detailed pictures of pressure-suit design and development, the early pressure suits, those from the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, advanced extra-vehicular suits, and those designed for the U.S. Air Force Manned Orbiting Laboratory program. Currently some of the suits are being x-rayed—a process that requires about 35 sheets of x-ray film per suit.

“You can’t pull a suit apart to see what's going on inside,” says Young. “You can either look down its neck with a flashlight or you can x-ray it. With the x-ray images, works of art themselves, you can see the ball bearings, the fibers, the sewing holes, and the rubber convoluted joints at the elbows, thighs, and knees that enabled the astronaut to walk.”

The striking photographs by Mark Avino, NASM’s chief of photographic services, with x-rays by Ron Cunningham of the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute, with Avino, are presented in Young’s just-published book, Spacesuits: The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Collection (powerHouse Books, 2009). The traveling exhibition Suited for Space includes these amazing images—many life size—along with informative text and some small objects.

—Ann Carper, SITES editor

Picture Perfect: Singgalot (The Ties That Bind) Filipinos in America, from Colonial Subjects to Citizens

It sounds like a Lifetime movie: World War II soldier falls in love and marries while stationed overseas, but can’t bring his bride back to the U.S. because of restrictions in the 1924 National Origins Act. Federal “war brides” legislation is enacted, and a new generation of Filipino families is created in America.

Flash forward 65 years. Marilyn Carbonell attends an exhibit reception and reading by poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil at the Kansas City (MO) Public Library’s Central Library. While strolling through Singgalot, she happens upon a never-before-seen photo of her mother as a 1946 war bride.

Carbonell’s first reaction upon seeing the exhibition panel was utter amazement. “I actually exclaimed rather loudly–probably too loudly for a library–‘That’s my mother!’” Continues Carbonell, “I was astounded and very moved to see her face–MY mother, Teofista Fernandez Ignacio Carbonell, as a young woman, aged 32/33, staring out at me, dressed in her coat with large buttons and holding her triangular purse.”

Carbonell’s family has been in the U.S. since 1905. Her father, Luis Hernandez Carbonell, immigrated to the U.S. through Seattle in the 1920s, eventually settling in Chicago, and worked for the U.S. Post Office as a mail clerk. He was 37 or 38 years old when he volunteered for the U.S. Army and attained the rank of Corporal T-5 in the Second Filipino Regiment that was sent to the Philippines, where he met and married her mother.

"My parents were very proud to be Americans and would have loved to see the history of Filipino immigration as told in the exhibit. Singgalot joins the past with the present through stories of the Filipino people who came to America, and it helps connect the generations.”

Coincidentally, that night Dr. Manuel Pardo, a well-known area physician, found a photo of his cousin, a Hawaiian ophthalmologist. Says Margaret Clark, director of adult programs at the Central Library,"To have visitors find family members included in exhibit content was a first for me. Needless to say, it made for a very special evening."

Singgalot is currently on view at Odegaard Undergraduate Library at the University of Washington, Seattle, and will travel to San Diego, San Francisco, California, PA, and other cities over the next two years. Please contact SITES at 202.633.3160 for more information about bringing the exhibition to your community. 

Developed by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program and organized by SITES. The Smithsonian tour is made possible by Farmers Insurance.

--Ann Carper, SITES Editor

Bookmark this!

"Waste not, want not” is always a good philosophy, and when it comes to printing, SITES doesn’t let a square inch of paper go to waste. Last month, on the The Mask of Lincoln poster portfolio, we realized that the four corners of the portfolio cover would be trimmed away to make the flaps.

Since Studio A, the designer of the project, was also working on our AAM booth graphics, we immediately sent them text and images to lay out two-sided, 2.5”x9” bookmarks in the four corners. Although there were nominal costs associated with trimming and packaging, we got attractive give-aways with our AAM graphic identity basically for free and another way to help market SITES shows throughout the year.

Good printers, like good designers, are problem solvers. And that's just what Colorcraft of Virginia did throughout this project, from offering tips on paper sizes to giving advice on shipping the portfolios to thousands of recipients across the U.S.

So don’t be afraid to ask questions. As that famous printer Ben Franklin said, "An investment in knowledge pays the best interest."

--Ann Carper, SITES editor