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The cheering, clapping and speechifying are over. Historians from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History have returned after their trips to the 2024 political party conventions to collect materials – from balloons to banners to blinking wristbands – at each of them. For the last in a series of…

Three political history curators from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History are heading to Chicago and the 2024 Democratic National Convention soon to collect stuff – or as the professionals call it, ephemera: everything from balloons to tickets to articles of clothing. The Smithsonian’s political campaign collection includes items…

Political history curators from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History are at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, collecting items from clothing to signs that will help tell the story of the 2024 presidential election. Conversation U.S. politics editor Naomi Schalit interviewed them last week, before they set out…

Thousands of Republicans, from a presidential candidate to grassroots party members, began assembling in Milwaukee on July 15, 2024, for that quadrennial political ritual, the party convention. Political history curators from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History were there, too. They’re self-described “scavengers” of the physical objects that make…