Associates Advisory

2 Gourmet Thanksgiving Dinner-to-Go Options by Smithsonian Restaurants

Restaurant Associates would love to make your Thanksgiving meal a delightful one this holiday season. Spend more time with your families and loved ones and let our chefs Jerome Gant and Freddie Bitsoie do the cooking!

We invite you to visit https://smithsonian.catertrax.com to place your orders or call the café for help placing an order.

Sweet Home Café: 202-633 6174  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This year Restaurant Associates will donate a Thanksgiving meal to a family in need with the partnership of Martha’s Table for every 25 meals sold.

SI volunteers and staff- Order a complete Thanksgiving Meal and receive a 50% discount on any additional pie.

Mitsitam Café: 202-633 7044

How to order an additional pie?

1. Add a request for an additional pie in the comment box when you checkout on Catertrax and make the payment for the pie when you pick up your order from the café.
2. If you are placing a phone order, please let the manager know that you would like to add an additional pie, and make a payment when you pick up your order from the café.

 

Wednesday, November 20th, Celebrate Native American Heritage Month with a Special Lunch

Free Event: Pocahontas: Her Place in the Emerging Atlantic World and Nascent United States, Tuesday, November 19

Pocahontas lived and died not only in the maelstrom of the English-Powhatan encounter in the early seventeenth century, but at a singular moment in world history. She participated in the newly emerging Atlantic world. Her legacy helped shape Europeans’ conception of that world and the United States’ conception of itself for centuries. Why and how so? Cécile R. Ganteaume explores what history records about Pocahontas and her impact on European and American thought.

(Photo credit: Pocahontas, unidentified artist, after Simon van de Passe, oil on canvas, after 1616, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of the A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, 1942.)

About the Speaker

Cécile R. Ganteaume is a curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. Ganteaume writes on American Indian art, culture, and history. She is co-curator of the award-winning exhibition Americans, on view at the museum on the National Mall through 2022. Her most recent book, Officially Indian: Symbols that Define the United States, published in fall 2017, is the companion book to Americans. Her latest project, the exhibition series Developing Stories: Native Photographers in the Field, opens at the museum in Washington and New York in January 2020. Ganteaume serves on the curatorial committee of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative, and is a recipient of a 2011 Secretary of the Smithsonian’s Excellence in Research Award and a team recipient of the 2018 Smithsonian Excellence in Exhibitions Award.

Rasmuson Theater, 1st floor

The event is free. Seating is available on a first come, first served basis.

The lecture will be live webcast at: https://americanindian.si.edu/explore/multimedia/webcasts

Smithsonian badged volunteers (and staff) a 20% discount on the related book, “Officially Indian: Symbols That Define the United States,” by Cécile R. Ganteaume, available in the museum’s store.

For further information on this message, contact Elizabeth Kennedy Gische, NMAI, 202-633-6855, [email protected]

Free Event to Celebrate Native American Heritage Month on Nov. 16 and 17

Celebrate Native American Heritage Month learning about the Blackfeet Nation and the many aspects unique to Blackfeet culture through this two-day festival. The Blackfeet Reservation, located in northwestern Montana along the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, is home to one of the 10 largest tribes in the United States, with more than 17,000 enrolled members.

Blackfeet artists, performers, historians and culture bearers will share demonstrations and performances throughout the festival weekend.

This event is presented with the generous support of The Henry Luce Foundation.

Location: Museum Wide

The event is free.

Smithsonian badged volunteers (and staff) receive 20% discount at the museum’s restaurant, café and store.

For more information:  [email protected]

It's All in the Cards: Master Crafter Karen Cadogan Teaches How

By Janet Hewitt

Karen Cadogan keeps the trains running on time at the Smithsonian Associates as its Administrative Program Specialist, but her side gig is rather intriguing as well: She creates elaborate, hand-crafted, cards which is an art form in and of itself.

And, it turns out, people are willing to learn her craft directly from her at Smithsonian Associates Studio Arts workshops. She has taught three versions thus far, built around prime card-giving holidays—think Mother’s Day, Christmas, and Valentine’s Day. (In fact, they just added an afternoon class on this Saturday, November 16, from 2 pm to 5 pm, because the morning session of “Holiday Card Workshop: Making Memorable Masterpieces” sold out.)

Most weekdays you might get a glimpse of her hurrying down a hallway at Ripley heading for a meeting, but on a few days of the year she puts on her instructor hat and meets the core audience for studio arts classes—eager, fun, smart people who are lucky enough to live in the DC area and take advantage of creative pursuits like this.

So while Ms. Cadogan is busy most days, non-stop, with the job she’s paid to do, we grabbed a few minutes of her time to hear more about her art form, and, well, just a little about her. (SPOILER ALERT: If you read on, you’ll meet a cat named Titus who likes to cuddle.)

Q: When did you first come on board at the Smithsonian Associates and what were you hired primarily to do? Has your job changed since you first arrived?

A: I started at Associates in 2001 as an Operations Coordinator. I went from the programming department to the IT department, where I did desktop support. From the IT department I moved to the administration department where I do all things admin and HR.

Q: When did you first start dabbling in the art of card-making? Are you self-taught or have you taken some classes from an instructor anywhere? What has your journey of discovery been like in terms of finding your unique art form?

A: I started making holiday cards in 2012. I wanted to send handmade cards to friends and family, but I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on supplies. I went to the local big box craft store, purchased about four stamp pads and a handful of wood block stamps with phrases. I used yarn and a few other recycled paper materials to make my cards. I still have one from that first year. It looks nothing like what I do now with pattern paper and die-cut images. I am self-taught, but will say YouTube is a great source for learning new techniques.