Smithsonian Associates Presents April Program Highlights

The April 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:

She Persisted, and Resisted: Four Centuries of Women in America

Wednesday, April 11; 6:45 p.m.
Smithsonian’s S. Dillon Ripley Center

Historian Elisabeth Griffith, a biographer of suffrage pioneer Elizabeth Cady Stanton, leads a fast-paced four-session lecture series that examines the history of women in America from the colonial period through second-wave feminism. The first session focuses on women from 1600–1770.

Henry Louis Gates Jr.: Benjamin Franklin Creativity Laureate Presentation

Friday, April 13; 7 p.m.
Smithsonian American Art Museum

Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, educator, literary scholar, journalist and cultural critic, Henry Louis Gates Jr., adds another distinction to the list: recipient of Smithsonian Associates’ 17th annual Benjamin Franklin Creativity Laureate Award. Gates will share his life and his passions in conversation with Elizabeth Alexander, poet, essayist, playwright and current president of the Andrew Mellon Foundation.

Gardening for Mother Earth: Garden Tour and Workshop

Sunday, April 22; 2 p.m.
H St. Farms at W.S. Jenks & Sons, 910 Bladensburg Rd. N.E.

This Earth Day, participants can celebrate Mother Earth with Niraj Ray, founder of Cultivate the City, a Washington, D.C., organization of urban farmers dedicated to locally grown food who plant in school yards, empty lots and rooftops and collaborate with community gardens, schools, restaurants, families and businesses. They will take a tour of one of Cultivate the City’s community gardens, gathering tips on how to garden and leave the planet a better place.

Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past

Thursday, April 26; 6:45 p.m.
Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian

Massive technological innovations now allow scientists to extract and analyze ancient DNA as never before. Geneticist David Reich, a pioneering in analyzing ancient human DNA, examines how these developments have transformed the understanding of people’s lineage as modern humans. His new book, Who We Are and How We Got Here (Pantheon), describes how the human genome provides not only all the information that a fertilized egg needs to develop but also contains within it the history of the human species.

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