[Md-sligo] FW: Smithsonian

[Reyazuddin, Yasmin]

Hi Everyone, 
This information comes from another list. I encourage you to visit the
website and review the exhibition. You may find some interesting facts. 

Yasmin Reyazuddin 
Aging & Disability Services 
Montgomery County Government 
Department of Health & Human Services 
401 Hungerford Drive (3rd floor) 
Rockville MD 20850 
240-777-0311 (MC311) 
240-777-1556 (personal) 
240-777-1495 (fax) 
office hours 8:30 am 5:00 pm 
Languages English, Hindi, Urdu, Braille 


This message may contain protected health information or other
information that is confidential or privileged. If you are not the
intended recipient, please contact the sender by return mail and destroy
any copies of this material. 

Thank you.



Visit The Online Exhibit -
http://everybody.si.edu/:

The Smithsonian National Museum of American History has a new on-line
exhibit titled "Everybody: An Artifact History of Disability in
America." People
with disabilities have been present throughout American history, but
rarely appear in textbooks or shared public memories. Curator Katherine
Ott introduces
a new online exhibition that helps us understand the American experience
and reveals how complicated history really is.

"There are thousands upon thousands of such stories about people with
disabilities that never make it into the history books. To broaden the
familiar narratives
of American history and give presence to some of the "disappeared" in
American history, we created an online exhibition about disability drawn
from the
museum's collections. The online exhibition is at the center of the
museum's work in unraveling the intricate ways in which stigma, rights,
and everyday
realities intertwine.

The museum has dozens of photographic images of people with
disabilities. We know neither the name nor circumstances of most of
them. Being anonymous or
forgotten does not mean that you are invisible. We can piece together
past experiences by combining what the image tells us (about age,
clothing, location,
era, activity) with what we know about the history of disability in
America. Such things as surfaced roads, escalators and elevators, the
internet, as
well as the closing of asylums and even the availability of inexpensive
eye-glasses and a host of medical treatments have created circumstances
that enabled
political and social change. Our artifacts can explain events such as
protests, hospitalization, first communion, and graduation and what they
meant in
the lives of people. Artifacts give shape and substance to historical
experiences in ways that retrieve stories of those who did not have the
resources,
support, or power to leave a mark."

Katherine Ott is a curator in the Division of Medicine and Science.