How Smithsonian curators scavenge political conventions to explain the present to the future and save everything from hats to buttons to umbrellas to soap
- Written by Naomi Schalit, Senior Editor, Politics + Democracy, The Conversation US
Smithsonian curators collect campaign material like these tall state standards used at the 2016 GOP convention.Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty ImagesThousands 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...

