Smithsonian Associates Presents March Program Highlights

The March issue of the Smithsonian Associates’ program guide features a variety of educational and cultural programs, including seminars, lectures, studio arts classes, performances for adults and children and local and regional study tours. Highlights this month include:

The Real Science (and Scientist) Behind The X-Files

Sunday, March 6; 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
Hirshhorn’s Marion & Gustave Ring Auditorium

Anne Simon, author of The Real Science Behind The X-Files: Microbes, Meteorites and Mutants, and professor and head of the virology program at the University of Maryland, discusses how science plays a role in The X-Files. Simon guided the show’s creator on topics such as viruses, cloning, “junk” DNA, nanotechnology and endosymbionts, leading to some of the most iconic X-Files episodes of the past and a story credit in the final episode of the recent six-episode FOX mini-series. 

Skyfaring: A Journey with a Pilot

Thursday, March 10; 6:45 p.m. to 8:45 p.m.
Smithsonian’s S. Dillon Ripley Center

Mark Vanhoenacker, a Boeing 747 pilot for British Airways, Slate columnist and New York Times contributor, offers a multidimensional, highly personal exploration of the human experience of flight, a fusion of science, geography, physics and astonishment that will make participants want a window seat on every flight. Vanhoenacker’s book, Skyfaring: A Journey with a Pilot (Knopf), will be available for signing.

The Purple Crayon and the Red Scare: More Than a Children’s Story

Tuesday, March 15; 6:45 p.m. to 8:45 p.m.
Smithsonian’s S. Dillon Ripley Center

Defiantly leftist in an era of McCarthyism and Cold War paranoia, Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss, best known for their enduring children’s classic Harold and the Purple Crayon, became the targets of FBI investigations. Drawing on his dual biography Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children's Literature (University Press of Mississippi), Philip Nel tells a true story of art, publishing, politics and the power of the imagination.

The Hollywood Musical: Four Decades of Magic! Part 1: The 1930s

Thursday, March 24; 6:45 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Smithsonian’s S. Dillon Ripley Center

In a lecture highlighted by musical recordings and film clips, American music specialist and raconteur Robert Wyatt ushers participants into the front row for an all-singing, all-dancing journey through the film musical’s early years.

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