Museum Artifacts

Many immigrants sought to preserve their cultural heritage while at the same time embracing their new identity as Americans. Manfred Anson did so in designing this Hanukkah lamp to mark the centennial of the Statue of Liberty in 1986. Anson, who escaped Nazi Germany as a teenager, later reunited wit

A skateboarding pioneer, Cindy Whitehead turned pro at seventeen, skating both pool and half-pipe and becoming one of the top-ranked vert skaters while competing against the boys. But Whitehead had no choice but to wear boys’ shorts when competing; there were no skate products for girls in the 197

This "Solar System" quilt was made by Ellen Harding Baker of Cedar County, Iowa, in 1876. The wool top of this applique quilt is embellished with wool-fabric applique, wool braid, and wool and silk embroidery. Included in the design is the appliqued inscription, "Solar System," and the embroidere

The bread tin was designed to keep the doughboy's ration of hard bread dry; earlier bread rations were packaged in cardboard containers which became soggy and ruined the contents.    

Developed in Scotland and played in the northern United States, curling debuted as a medal sport at the 1998 Winter Olympics. This curling stone belonged to 75-year-old curler Rudy Senich, of Duluth, Minn., who has been curling three nights a week for the past 35 years. According to Senich's curl

When the Depression and resulting banking crisis hit their community, the residents of the coastal town of Pismo Beach, California picked an unusual but logical medium of exchange. Perhaps with tongue in cheek, the merchants and officials of Pismo Beach decided to make the best of a bad situation

In the 15th century, decades before they sailed into the Caribbean, Spanish merchants, captains, and adventurers had already conquered and enslaved the people of the Canary Islands in the eastern Atlantic Ocean. On the western coast of continental Africa, the Portuguese had been cultivating a sla

Before 1954, so-called portable radio receivers used vacuum tubes to receive and amplify signals. The large batteries needed to power most tubes made radios large and heavy. Receivers built with subminiature tubes existed but were expensive. The invention of transistors in 1947 allowed engineers

Immokalee Statue of Liberty, by Kat Rodriguez, 2000 The statue’s original pedestal (not shown) features a simple message borrowed from African American poet Langston Hughes: “I, too, am America.” This Lady Liberty holds

In this handheld, small booklet carried and distributed by Union soldiers, it contained the brief but powerful words of the Emancipation Proclamation. Some of those Union soldiers were African American, and they carried and read this message granting freedom to those enslaved. Have students think ab