Smithsonian (magazine)

• 1. Introduction

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  Smithsonian magazine arrived in 1970 with a mandate unlike any other publication of its era. S. Dillon Ripley, then-Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, wanted a magazine about things the Institution "is interested, might be interested or ought to be interested" in. That phrasing is deliberately open-ended, almost restless. It left room for almost anything.

  To bring the idea to life, Ripley turned to Edward K. Thompson, a man who had spent years shaping one of America's most celebrated publications, Life magazine. Thompson accepted the challenge and articulated a vision that remains striking for its ambition: he wanted to stir curiosity in minds that were already receptive. He wanted to treat art as something that never goes out of date. He wanted to make science readable without dumbing it down. And he wanted the writers and photographers to be the best in the business, not unlike the best of the old Life.

  Within five years of its first issue, the magazine had crossed one million subscribers, a milestone its founders could not have taken for granted. The questions worth asking are: how did a federal institution's house publication become a genuine editorial force? Who shaped it? And what happened to the annual awards ceremony it once ran out of its own offices?

• 2. Thompson's Vision

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  Edward K. Thompson set down his philosophy for Smithsonian in terms that read more like a personal credo than an editorial memo. History, he wrote, should be treated as it is relevant to the present, not as a catalog of the past. Art should appear in the richest possible reproduction, because true art is never dated. Science and technology should be digested by skilled writers who would stimulate readers to reach upward without turning them off with jargon.

  That last phrase matters. Thompson was working at a moment when popular science writing often landed in one of two failure modes: too simplified to be credible, or too technical to attract a general reader. His solution was to hire writers first, subject-matter experts second. The goal was an audience that left each issue feeling smarter, not overwhelmed.

  The model owed something obvious to Life, where Thompson had worked as editor before taking the Smithsonian assignment. He said so directly, describing the kind of talent he was after as "not unlike the best of the old Life." That comparison carried real weight in 1970; Life had spent decades defining what ambitious general-interest journalism could look like, and Thompson knew its vocabulary intimately. His choice of contributors would later include writers such as David McCullough, Jon Krakauer, Susan Orlean, and Paul Theroux.

• 3. A Remarkable Launch

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  By 1973, Smithsonian had turned a profit for the first time, a threshold that many new magazines never reach. The following year, circulation had nearly quadrupled, to 635,000. Then, in 1975, it crossed one million, which the record shows was one of the most successful launches of its time.

  That pace of growth is worth sitting with. Going from first issue to a million subscribers in five years is not typical, even for publications with major institutional backing. The Smithsonian Institution's name was clearly a draw, lending the magazine a credibility that a startup without such a patron would have had to earn more slowly.

  Circulation would eventually exceed two million during the editorship of Carey Winfrey, who retired in 2001. That figure represents a high-water mark the magazine reached under a succession of editors, each of whom inherited the broad editorial mandate Thompson had originally defined. Don Moser, who replaced Thompson in 1980, had also worked at Life, maintaining a thread of continuity with the magazine's founding sensibility.

• 4. The American Ingenuity Awards

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  From 2012 until 2019, Smithsonian ran the American Ingenuity Awards, a recognition program for innovation across the arts, sciences, and technology. The award itself was created by the artist Jeff Koons.

  The list of winners reads as a deliberate cross-section of American creative life. Bryan Stevenson, the civil-rights lawyer, appeared alongside Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. Lin-Manuel Miranda, then known well before Hamilton became a cultural landmark, received the award, as did musician Rosanne Cash, author Dave Eggers, and comedian Aziz Ansari. OK Go, the band that built a reputation on elaborate music videos, won alongside actor John Krasinski and filmmaker David Lynch. The mix was intentional: the magazine had always argued that innovation is not the exclusive property of science or technology.

  Presenters brought their own names to the event. Stephen Hawking appeared twice in that role. Others who took the stage included Stephen Colbert, musician David Byrne, jazz pianist Herbie Hancock, environmental activist Erin Brockovich, singer Ruben Blades, science communicator Bill Nye, graphic novelist Art Spiegelman, and Senator Al Franken. The awards ran for seven years before the magazine ended the program in 2019.

• 5. Museum Day and Its End

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  Smithsonian also organized Museum Day, an annual event in which museums across all 50 U.S. states offered limited free admission. The structure was specific: one free ticket per person, admitting the ticket holder and a guest. That was a deliberate contrast with International Museum Day, which typically offers entirely free admission throughout the day without per-person ticketing.

  In 2018, over 1,400 museums participated, a figure that reflects how broadly the program had spread beyond the Smithsonian's own network of facilities. The event drew in institutions of every size and type, from local history collections to large natural history museums.

  In 2023 and 2024, the event was cancelled without any public explanation from the magazine. The web landing page that had hosted event information was redirected to the museum's home page, leaving no formal announcement behind. The quiet disappearance of a program that had engaged more than a thousand institutions at its peak is one of the more puzzling chapters in the magazine's recent history.

• 6. The Writers Who Shaped It

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  Smithsonian's contributor list over the decades has included writers whose careers extended well beyond the magazine. David McCullough, known for his long-form histories of figures such as John Adams and Harry Truman, contributed work. Jon Krakauer, whose account of a 1996 Everest disaster appeared in Outside magazine before becoming a book, also wrote for Smithsonian. Susan Orlean, Nathaniel Philbrick, Jill Lepore, and Paul Theroux each brought distinct approaches to the magazine's pages.

  Other names on the contributor list are less frequently grouped with that cohort but equally significant in their fields. Penn Jillette, the performer and writer, appeared alongside science journalist Jo Marchant and physicist Alan Lightman. Frank Deford, one of the most celebrated sportswriters of his era, contributed alongside novelist Eileen Gunn.

  The breadth of that roster reflects Thompson's founding insistence on finding writers first. Michael Caruso, who succeeded Carey Winfrey as editor-in-chief in 2011 and held the position until 2019, oversaw the magazine through the final years of the American Ingenuity Awards. Since 2019, Debra Rosenberg and Terence Monmaney have served as editors, carrying forward a publication that, by any standard of longevity, has outlasted a great many of its contemporaries.