smithsonian museum 3d tour

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Go explore American art Beyond the Walls, a virtual reality experience that transports you directly into the galleries of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.  Beyond the Walls blends photorealistic 3D capture imagery of artworks from the Smithsonian American Art Museum's collection with augmented elements which let you interact with and learn about the museum’s collection using a headset and handheld controller.

Beyond the Walls  is a high fidelity, immersive museum experience, and is compatible with Oculus and Vive headsets.  Available for FREE download after July 15.

Tips for a Great Virtual Reality Experience

• The experience requires use of a VR headset, so find a place where you are free to move and rotate safely.
• To “click” on an a teleport marker within the space, press the trigger, point to the teleport location with your handheld controller and release the trigger.
• Although headphones are not required, they are highly recommended for the audio narration track and ambient sound of the media artworks.
• Although a VR headset can be used at any age, we recommend this experience for 13 years of age and older.

Learn more about the artworks from Beyond the Walls at the Smithsonian American Art Museum

This virtual museum presents a selection of unique paintings, sculpture, and multimedia artworks for you to engage and interact with as you freely explore the museum’s east wing from inside a VR headsets. Four of the museum’s artworks serve hotspots which feature a little bit of extra VR “magic”:

Frederic Edwin Church

Frederic Edwin Church,  Aurora Borealis ,  1865, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum

In this painting, Frederic Edwin Church has taken the aurora borealis—ethereal, dynamic, and alien—and captured it in oil paint, making you believe that you are standing underneath that phenomenon, witnessing the colors reflected off the ice. In VR, you can stand closer to the painting than might ever be permitted in real life, allowing you to examine its texture and observe its rich custom frame. VR users standing in front of the painting can trigger a teleportation hotspot which sends them to a remote mountain in Iceland, where they are suddenly in a dark landscape, looking around at jaw-dropping, 360-degree 6K video footage of an actual aurora blazing in the sky, provided by designer and photographer Olafur Haraldsson. The ability to compare and contrast the two scenes offers rich opportunities for learning and observation.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Roman Bronze Works,  Adams Memorial ,  modeled 1886-1891, cast 1969, bronze, Smithsonian American Art Museum

In 1885, Marian Hooper “Clover” Adams, an amateur photographer and the wife of the writer Henry Adams, committed suicide by drinking poisonous chemicals used to develop film. Her grieving husband commissioned prominent sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens to create a memorial to her that would express the Buddhist idea of nirvana, a state of being beyond joy and sorrow. Saint-Gaudens modeled a powerful shrouded figure, and then worked closely with architect Stanford White, who designed a secluded, contemplative setting for Clover’s gravesite in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C.. Decades later, the Smithsonian American Art Museum acquired a bronze cast made after the original in the cemetery. When standing in front of SAAM’s bronze cast in VR, you can choose to teleport to Clover’s actual gravesite, coming face-to-face with the same sculpture, but this time in the context of the private outdoor memorial for which it was originally intended. Soft sunshine filters through a bank of trees, which move softly in the background, and the bench surrounding the sculpture allows for a moment of quiet contemplation. Flashing back and forth between the museum’s version and the outdoor version, you can notice the differences, sometimes subtle, that distinguish the two casts, and the effects of weather on the outdoor installation.

Hiram Powers

Hiram Powers,  Model of the Greek Slave ,  1843, plaster and metal pins, Smithsonian American Art Museum

The original marble sculpture of the Greek Slave propelled its artist, Hiram Powers, to international stardom. The Greek Slave was almost immediately associated with the anti-slavery movement in the United States, as abolitionists used images of it to promote their cause. The 3D model that appears in the VR app was rendered from a scan of the original plaster model that dates to 1843; in fact, this VR edition is a not work that exists in the real world at all. The presence of this sculpture in VR provides an opportunity to draw parallels between contemporary 3D scanning technology and nineteenth-century mechanical reproduction techniques, and to talk about the slippery (and often unhelpful) concept of “the original,” when it comes to sculpture.

Alex Prager,  Face in the Crowd ,  2013, three-channel video installation, color, sound; 11:52 minutes, Smithsonian American Art Museum

The only contemporary artwork to appear in the Beyond the Walls  VR experience is a selection from a video installation by Los Angeles-based artist Alex Prager. When you experience it in the physical museum, Face in the Crowd is installed in a black box gallery, where video plays asynchronously on three of the walls. The experience in VR looks no different, with one notable exception: the artist herself is standing in the room with you. You can walk up to Prager (or around her—she was volumetrically scanned and has been fully rendered in three dimensions) as she tells you about the inspiration for her artwork as you experience it “together.”  Prager’s artwork deals with the anxiety of being swept up by the masses while trying to create and maintain a sense of self—conditions long present in the physical world—and how this anxiety can be amplified in the virtual spaces we inhabit today. 

Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History Virtual Tour

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Welcome to Smithsonian Open Access, where you can download, share, and reuse millions of the Smithsonian’s images—right now, without asking. With new platforms and tools, you have easier access to more than 4.9 million 2D and 3D digital items from our collections—with many more to come. This includes images and data from across the Smithsonian’s 21 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo.

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Apollo 11 Command Module

• Interior VR

The Apollo 11 Command Module, “Columbia,” was the living quarters for the three-person crew during most of the first manned lunar landing mission in July 1969. On July 16, 1969, Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and Michael Collins were launched from Cape Kennedy atop a Saturn V rocket.

Click the globe icon within the 3D viewer to go on a guided tour!

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Viewing this 3D model requires a modern browser and hardware. For the best experience use Chrome, Firefox or Safari browser on a desktop, laptop or high performance mobile platform.

About The Process

The 3-D scanning process for the command module was extremely challenging. The module is composed of reflective surfaces that 3-D capture devices do not read well. Its interior dashboards are made up of many components that are delicate and intricate, which also presents a challenge for many 3-D capture devices. Because of the complicated nature of this scan, the Smithsonian 3-D team worked with its technology partner, Autodesk Inc., a leader in cloud-based 3-D design and engineering software.

The Apollo 11 Command Capsule Digitization Story

To mark the 47th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon-landing mission, the Smithsonian has made available a high-resolution 3-D scan of the command module “Columbia,” the spacecraft that carried astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and Michael Collins to the moon. This highly detailed model allows anyone with an internet connection to explore the entire craft including its intricate interior, which is not possible when viewing the artifact in the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. The Smithsonian is also making the data files of the model available for download so it can be 3-D printed or viewed with virtual-reality goggles.

The scanning allowed for the curatorial and collections team to get glimpses of the interior of the Command Module that they had not previously seen. Protective covering over the hatch opening of the Command Module has only been removed a handful of times since the artifact came into the collection in 1971. During the scanning they rediscovered a number of instances of “astronaut graffiti” not previously known to the museum. Seeing such details and studying the text have enabled curators to enhance their understanding of how the missions were conducted.

With current internet speeds the model we are able to deliver for viewing online represents only a fraction of the actual data we collected. Want to see more? You can download the medium resolution files model below and view them using a free version of ReMake software. We are also working to make higher resolution models and raw scan data available for download in the near future, please check back soon for updates. Also check out all of our latest 3D downloads at 3d.si.edu/browser .

Read more on the Smithsonian Newsdesk »

3D Print Ready Models

We have a few “water-tight” 3D model downloads that are ready to run through your prefered 3D printing process. Once your print is complete please share the results on Twitter @3D_Digi_SI , Facebook or email directly at [email protected] .

Don't have access to a 3D printer? You can use these models to order from a variety of online 3D print service providers.

Render Ready Models

Vr ready downloads.

Take the pilot seat (literally you should sit down when using most VR headsets) inside the command module! We have a few platforms supported as well as VR renders you can plug into other platforms.

We strive to make “least interpreted” data available for download so that students and scholars alike can understand how we arrived at our final visualizations. Perhaps you will come up with your own use of these datasets. As such we will be making photogrammetry images, raw scan data as well as foundational composited models available for download.

Coming Soon!

• Surphaser Laser Scan data
• Photogrammetry Data
• Canon 5DS R: 11,874 50mp Images
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Tell Us About Your Project

All non-commercial, educational and personal uses of this data are permitted, in accordance with the following terms of use .In order to download the files you must agree to the terms of use. Additionally, we'd love to know how you're using the files and what kind of work you do; this information is optional.

In May 2017, a team of eight 3D scanning experts from the Smithsonian’s Digitization Program Office and collections staff from the National Air and Space Museum set out to capture a comprehensive 3D dataset of the largest museum artifact ever to be digitized: Space Shuttle Discovery . It took six tireless weeks to capture Space Shuttle Discovery , inside and out.

An epic project creates an epic amount of data, 4.2 TB to be precise. These datasets were created using a variety of capture techniques including laser scanning, structured light scanning, and photogrammetry. Though the team captured the entire shuttle during this project, processing the data into viewable 3D models is a daunting project in itself. To date, only the exterior has been fully processed, and it is viewable and downloadable online now. You can view it below or on the DPO website .

The primary digitization technique used in this project was photogrammetry, a 3D capture process that involves taking many photographs of an object from as many angles as possible, making sure to capture every crevice and detail. These photos are then fed into specialized software that recognizes landmarks in the photographs and uses them to reconstruct the object in 3D space. This process can be done very simply through a camera phone or, in the case of the Smithsonian, it can be done through a highly precise process meant to capture the objects in archival quality.

To achieve the level of detail desired, the capture team used 50 megapixel cameras and captured the surface of the shuttle in predefined sections, with a 60% overlap between photographs. This required precise planning and coordination between the capture technicians and collections staff, who were spread out  on the ground, in lifts up to 60 feet in the air, and working inside the shuttle crew areas and cargo bay. For an understanding of the scope of coverage in the project, it took over 27,000 photos to capture the entire exterior surface of the shuttle, and 18,000 to capture the interior.

The software visualization below shows some of the 27,000 images that went into creating the exterior model of the shuttle. The white triangles indicate the individual positions the cameras were in when they took each photograph.

The data created from this project is providing unprecedented access to an object to which many people have a personal or emotional connection. 

During my time capturing the underside of the shuttle, I spoke to a lot of people about Discovery and our work: Since I was down on the ground near where the public could stand to view the shuttle, I received a lot of questions about what we were doing. On two separate occasions, someone asked me, from behind the stanchions, if I could see a specific serial number on a tile from my vantage point. These two individuals had family members that were a part of the huge team of scientists and engineers that built this shuttle. They had personal family ties to specific parts of the shuttle, and could point to those tiles to understand their family’s part in creating this piece of American aerospace history.

Smithsonian's Digitzation Program Office collect 3D data of Space Shuttle  Discovery.

For the safety of the shuttle, people cannot walk underneath it in the gallery. The public can experience the magnificent object by walking around it from the ground level or up on surrounding walkways in its hangar at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. Thanks to the technology collaborations created through this project with Sketchfab and Cesium , you can now go online and zoom in to analyze the surface of the shuttle, down to the serial numbers on the tiles. Cutting edge online 3D viewing tools, like Sketchfab’s massive model viewer , allow users to load this huge dataset gradually as they zoom in, as seen in the tweet below.

Through a #SmithsonianOpenAccess collaboration with @Sketchfab you can now inspect the MASSIVE @airandspace Space Shuttle Discovery #3d data down to the serial numbers on the tiles! https://t.co/DG5iIg3BLq @smithsonian #openaccess pic.twitter.com/YLlZ5VlKse — Smithsonian 3D (@3D_Digi_SI) March 2, 2020

The capture team spent two weeks capturing the inside of the shuttle in the same intricate detail as the outside. This data is currently being processed and will be online to view soon. In the meantime, you can experience the inside of the shuttle with a VR headset thanks to a collaboration with Google and their experimental Light Fields VR technology , or through a 360 video hosted by astronauts Charlie Bolden and Kathy Sullivan, who flew on Discovery in 1990. 

Through the collaborations with Sketchfab, Cesium, and Google, we are able to share a piece of human history in breathtaking detail with anyone with an internet connection. Not only can the data be viewed, but thanks to the recent Smithsonian’s Open Access Initiative, this data can be downloaded and remixed by anyone, for free, without asking permission. This project was made possible by generous support provided by Meredith Siegfried Madden and Dr. Peter Madden. Access more of the Smithsonian’s 3D open access data.

We rely on the generous support of donors, sponsors, members, and other benefactors to share the history and impact of aviation and spaceflight, educate the public, and inspire future generations.  With your help, we can continue to preserve and safeguard the world’s most comprehensive collection of artifacts representing the great achievements of flight and space exploration.

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The Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Program

3d collection.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: As of December 8, 2020, our 3D hominin fossil collection is viewable on the Smithsonian's 3D Digitization website here https://3d.si.edu/collections/hominin-fossils , and our 3D prehistoric artifact collection is viewable on the Smithsonian's 3D Digitization website here https://3d.si.edu/collections/prehistoric-artifacts .

Welcome to our 3D collection of fossils, artifacts, and primates. The purpose of this collection is to allow you to view your favorite objects from our David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins or to examine many of the primate skeletons housed in our museum's collections. All of the virtual objects on display were either CT or laser scanned. The scanning process enabled us to generate 3D models of each object that you can view, rotate, and interact with online. It may take a minute or two to load depending on your computer, but after it is loaded you will be able to move the 3D object around by holding down the left-click button and moving your mouse.

3D models of all specimens in our 3D Collection that are owned and curated by the Smithsonian Institution (Primates) are available for download for non-commercial use only. Please note that the 3D models of Fossil Hominins and Artifacts are not available for download. These are copies of specimens and objects that are owned and curated by other museums/institutions; thus, we do not distribute these data. If you are interested in 3D data of primates or other animals, please go to the "Contact Us" page on this website, choose "Ask a question" from the drop-down menu under Category choice below, and paste "3D model download access" in the subject line of your message. We will respond to your request within a few weeks.

• Climate Effects on Human Evolution
• Survival of the Adaptable
• Human Evolution Timeline Interactive
• 2011 Olorgesailie Dispatches
• 2004 Olorgesailie Dispatches
• 1999 Olorgesailie Dispatches
• Olorgesailie Drilling Project
• Kanam, Kenya
• Kanjera, Kenya
• Ol Pejeta, Kenya
• Olorgesailie, Kenya
• Evolution of Human Innovation
• Adventures in the Rift Valley: Interactive
• 'Hobbits' on Flores, Indonesia
• Earliest Humans in China
• Bose, China
• Anthropocene: The Age of Humans
• Fossil Forensics: Interactive
• What's Hot in Human Origins?
• Instructions
• Carnivore Dentition
• Ungulate Dentition
• Primate Behavior
• Footprints from Koobi Fora, Kenya
• Laetoli Footprint Trails
• Footprints from Engare Sero, Tanzania
• Hammerstone from Majuangou, China
• Handaxe and Tektites from Bose, China
• Handaxe from Europe
• Handaxe from India
• Oldowan Tools from Lokalalei, Kenya
• Olduvai Chopper
• Stone Tools from Majuangou, China
• Middle Stone Age Tools
• Burin from Laugerie Haute & Basse, Dordogne, France
• La Madeleine, Dordogne, France
• Butchered Animal Bones from Gona, Ethiopia
• Katanda Bone Harpoon Point
• Oldest Wooden Spear
• Punctured Horse Shoulder Blade
• Stone Sickle Blades
• Projectile Point
• Oldest Pottery
• Pottery Fragment
• Fire-Altered Stone Tools
• Terra Amata Shelter
• Qafzeh: Oldest Intentional Burial
• Assyrian Cylinder Seal
• Blombos Ocher Plaque
• Ishango Bone
• Bone and Ivory Needles
• Carved Ivory Running Lion
• Female torso in ivory
• Ivory Horse Figurine
• Ivory Horse Sculpture
• Lady of Brassempouy
• Lion-Man Figurine
• Willendorf Venus
• Ancient Shell Beads
• Carved Bone Disc
• Cro-Magnon Shell Bead Necklace
• Oldest Known Shell Beads
• Ancient Flute
• Ancient Pigments
• Apollo 11 Plaque
• Carved antler baton with horses
• Geometric incised bone rectangle
• Tata Plaque
• Mystery Skull Interactive
• Shanidar 3 - Neanderthal Skeleton
• One Species, Living Worldwide
• Human Skin Color Variation
• Ancient DNA and Neanderthals
• Human Family Tree
• Swartkrans, South Africa
• Shanidar, Iraq
• Walking Upright
• Tools & Food
• Social Life
• Language & Symbols
• Humans Change the World
• Introduction to Human Evolution
• Nuts and bolts classification: Arbitrary or not? (Grades 6-8)
• The Origins and Evolution of Human Bipedality (Grades 9-12)
• Comparison of Human and Chimp Chromosomes (Grades 9-12)
• Hominid Cranial Comparison: The "Skulls" Lab (Grades 9-12)
• Investigating Common Descent: Formulating Explanations and Models (Grades 9-12)
• Fossil and Migration Patterns in Early Hominids (Grades 9-12)
• For College Students
• Why do we get goose bumps?
• Chickens, chimpanzees, and you - what do they have in common?
• Grandparents are unique to humans
• How strong are we?
• Humans are handy!
• Humans: the running ape
• Our big hungry brain!
• Our eyes say it!
• The early human tool kit
• The short-haired human!
• The “Nutcracker”
• What can lice tell us about human evolution?
• What does gut got to do with it?
• Why do paleoanthropologists love Lucy?
• Why do we have wisdom teeth?
• Human Origins Glossary
• Teaching Evolution through Human Examples
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Recommended Books
• Exhibit Floorplan Interactive
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• Reconstructions of Early Humans
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• Orion Township Public Library
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• Wyckoff Free Public Library
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• Human Origins Do it Yourself Exhibit
• Exhibit Field Trip Guide
• Acknowledgments
• Human Origins Program Team
• Connie Bertka
• Betty Holley
• Nancy Howell
• Lee Meadows
• Jamie L. Jensen
• David Orenstein
• Michael Tenneson
• Leonisa Ardizzone
• David Haberman
• Fred Edwords (Emeritus)
• Elliot Dorff (Emeritus)
• Francisca Cho (Emeritus)
• Peter F. Ryan (Emeritus)
• Mustansir Mir (Emeritus)
• Randy Isaac (Emeritus)
• Mary Evelyn Tucker (Emeritus)
• Wentzel van Huyssteen (Emeritus)
• Joe Watkins (Emeritus)
• Tom Weinandy (Emeritus)
• Members Thoughts on Science, Religion & Human Origins (video)
• Science, Religion, Evolution and Creationism: Primer
• The Evolution of Religious Belief: Seeking Deep Evolutionary Roots
• Laboring for Science, Laboring for Souls:  Obstacles and Approaches to Teaching and Learning Evolution in the Southeastern United States
• Public Event : Religious Audiences and the Topic of Evolution: Lessons from the Classroom (video)
• Evolution and the Anthropocene: Science, Religion, and the Human Future
• Imagining the Human Future: Ethics for the Anthropocene
• Human Evolution and Religion: Questions and Conversations from the Hall of Human Origins
• I Came from Where? Approaching the Science of Human Origins from Religious Perspectives
• Religious Perspectives on the Science of Human Origins
• Submit Your Response to "What Does It Mean To Be Human?"
• Volunteer Opportunities
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• "Shaping Humanity: How Science, Art, and Imagination Help Us Understand Our Origins" (book by John Gurche)
• What Does It Mean To Be Human? (book by Richard Potts and Chris Sloan)
• Bronze Statues
• Reconstructed Faces

Past Exhibits

Please note: This is not a comprehensive tour of all past exhibits at the National Museum of Natural History. This is a tour of only a selection of past exhibits at NMNH.

Against All Odds: Rescue at the Chilean Mine

• Mine Rescue

Cyprus: Crossroads of Civilization

Dig It! Secrets of the Soil

Evolving Universe

Former Fossil Hall

• Dinosaur 4 (high)
• Dinosaur 5 (high)
• Early Life 1
• Early Life 2
• Early Life 3
• Ancient Seas 1
• Ancient Seas 2
• Ancient Seas 3
• Ancient Seas 4
• Ancient Seas 5
• Ancient Seas 6

Iceland Revealed

• Iceland Revealed 1
• Iceland Revealed 2

Last American Dinosaurs

• Last American Dinosaurs 4
• Last American Dinosaurs 3
• Last American Dinosaurs 2
• Last American Dinosaurs 1
• Mud Masons of Mali

Narwhal: Revealing an Arctic Legend

National Geographic: Into Africa

• National Geographic: Into Africa: Photography 1
• National Geographic: Into Africa: Photography 2
• National Geographic: Into Africa: Photography 3
• National Geographic: Into Africa: Photography 4

Nature's Best Photography Exhibits

• 2012 Photography 1
• 2012 Photography 2
• 2013 Photography 1
• 2013 Photography 2
• 2013 Photography 3
• 2019 Photography 1
• 2019 Photography 2

Orchid Exhibits

• 2008 Orchids 1
• 2008 Orchids 2
• 2011 Orchids 1
• 2011 Orchids 2
• 2011 Orchids 3

Outbreak: Epidemics in a Connected World

• Discovery Room

Western Cultures

• Western Cultures 1
• Western Cultures 2
• Western Cultures 3
• Western Cultures 4
• Western Cultures 5
• Western Cultures 6
• Western Cultures 7

Wilderness 50

• Wilderness 1
• Wilderness 2

Written in Bone

• Written in Bone 1
• Written in Bone 2
• Written in Bone 3
• Written in Bone 4
• Written in Bone 5
• Written in Bone 6
• Written in Bone 7
• Written in Bone 8
• Written in Bone 9
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A Private Tour of the CIA’s Incredible Museum

Inside the agency’s headquarters is a museum filled with relics from half a century of cloak-and-dagger exploits

A chill wind whipped off the Warnow as a retired railroad worker shuffled through the streets of the port city of Rostock one winter night in 1956. He wore the drab clothes typical of East German residents. But when a second man appeared from the shadows, the elderly German revealed that he was wearing a pair of distinctive gold cuff links embossed with the helmet of the Greek goddess Athena and a small sword.

The second man wore an identical pair. Wordlessly, he handed the German a package of documents and retreated back into the shadows. The German caught a train for East Berlin, where he handed the package and the cuff links to a CIA courier. The courier smuggled them to the agency’s base in West Berlin—to George Kisevalter, who was on his way to becoming a legendary CIA case officer.

The man who retreated back into the shadows was Lt. Col. Pyotr Semyonovich Popov, an officer of the GRU, the Soviet military intelligence agency. Three years earlier, Popov had dropped a note into an American diplomat’s car in Vienna saying, “I am a Soviet officer. I wish to meet with an American officer with the object of offering certain services.” He was the CIA’s first Soviet mole, and Kisevalter was his handler. Popov became one of the CIA’s most important sources through the 1950s, turning over a trove of Soviet military secrets that included biographical details on 258 of his fellow GRU officers.

It was Kisevalter who had decided on the cuff links as a recognition signal. He gave them to Popov before Moscow recalled the GRU officer in 1955, along with instructions: If Popov ever made it out of the USSR again and renewed contact with the CIA, whoever the agency sent to meet him would wear a matching set to establish his bona fides.

Popov renewed contact after he was assigned to Schwerin, East Germany, and the cuff links worked as intended. He fed Kisevalter information through the retired railroad worker for another two years. But after Popov was recalled to Moscow in 1958, he was arrested by the KGB. There are various theories on why he fell under suspicion. However, in a series of interviews two decades ago, Kisevalter told me it was the result of a botched signal: He said George Payne Winters Jr., a State Department officer working for the CIA in Moscow, “got the instruction backward” and mistakenly mailed a letter addressed to Popov at his home. The KGB spotted him in the act and fished the letter out of the mailbox. Popov was doomed.

The Soviets expelled Winters from Moscow in 1960, the same year they executed Popov—by firing squad, Kisevalter believed. He told biographer Clarence Ashley he doubted a rumor that Popov had been thrown alive into a furnace as a lesson to other GRU officers, who were required to watch.

Today, the cuff links rest in one of the most compelling and least visited museums in the United States. The museum has an extraordinary collection of spy gadgets, weapons and espionage memorabilia from before World War II to the present—more than 28,000 items, of which 18,000 have been cataloged—and hundreds are on display. But the museum is run by the CIA and housed at its headquarters in Langley, Virginia, eight miles outside Washington, D.C. The agency’s entire campus is off-limits to the public, and the museum is open only to CIA employees, their families and visitors on agency business. By special arrangement,  Smithsonian magazine was allowed to tour the museum, take notes and photograph select exhibits. Our guide through the looking glass was Toni Hiley, the museum’s director. “Every day, CIA officers help to shape the course of world events,” Hiley said. “The CIA has a rich history, and our museum is where we touch that history.”

SILENT THREAT The Hi-Standard .22-caliber pistol is described in the exhibit as “ideal for use in close spaces or for eliminating sentries.” Developed by Stanley P. Lovell, the chief of gadgets and weapons for the Office of Strategic Services, the CIA’s World War II predecessor, the long-barreled weapon was flashless and silencer-equipped—designed to kill without making a sound.

How quiet was it? According to Lovell’s account, Maj. Gen. William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan, the chief of the OSS, was so eager to show off his agency’s latest lethal gadget that he took a Hi-Standard and a sandbag to the Oval Office. While President Franklin D. Roosevelt was busy dictating to his secretary, Lovell wrote in his book Of Spies and Stratagems, Donovan fired ten rounds into the sandbag. FDR gave no notice and never stopped talking, so Donovan wrapped his handkerchief around the still-hot barrel and presented the weapon to the president, telling him what he had just done.

Roosevelt is said to have responded, “Bill, you’re the only wild-eyed Republican I’d ever let in here with a weapon.” Donovan gave FDR one of the guns, Hiley told me: “It was displayed in Hyde Park. But the OSS came one day and said they’d have to take it back because it was classified.”

THE PURLOINED LETTER As the Nazi regime collapsed in 1945, a young OSS officer sat down to write a letter to his son in the United States. “Dear Dennis,” he wrote,

The man who might have written on this card once controlled Europe—three short years ago when you were born. Today he is dead, his memory despised, his country in ruins. He had a thirst for power, a low opinion of man as an individual, and a fear of intellectual honesty. He was a force for evil in the world. His passing, his defeat—a boon to mankind. But thousands died that it might be so. The price for ridding society of bad is always high. Love, Daddy

The card on which Richard Helms was writing was a piece of Adolf Hitler’s personal stationery. It bore a gold-embossed eagle holding a swastika above the Nazi leader’s name. To the right was printed the word “Obersalzberg,” referring to Hitler’s retreat high in the Bavarian Alps above Berchtesgaden.

“I found the letter when I was in high school, in a bunch of scrapbooks my mother kept, but I had no idea of its significance,” Dennis Helms, now 72 and a lawyer in New Jersey, told me. “It just sat there in a suitcase I kept under my bed, tucked away in a scrapbook with the Christmas pictures.” He donated it to the agency in 2011.

He says the letter gave him insight into the secretive and private nature of his father, who served as CIA director from 1966 to 1973, when he was dismissed by President Richard M. Nixon. Richard Helms died in 2002. “The letter was a very emotional expression for my father,” he said. “He was not known for emotions. He was all about the facts. He was the most understated guy on the planet.

“I knew early on he was in the CIA. When friends asked, I would say he worked for the State Department. They would ask what he did and I said, ‘I don’t know.’ They said, ‘You must be pretty stupid.’ ”

When Dennis asked his father how he had managed to snare a piece of Hitler’s stationery, he received a vague answer. Although the letter was dated V-E Day—May 8, 1945—Richard Helms wasn’t even in Germany that day, although he was later stationed in Berlin. Dennis says he wasn’t surprised that his father’s life remained surrounded by mysteries: “I found things in the museum that he had never mentioned.”

LISTEN HERE In spy fiction, an electronic bug is usually small enough to fit inside a cellphone or to be sewn into the lining of a jacket an unwitting victim takes to the cleaners. In spy life, an electronic bug can be ten feet long.

The bug in this instance is an insulated metal reinforcing bar, one of dozens the KGB embedded in the walls of the U.S. embassy in Moscow, and thus a relic of one of the most awkward episodes in the U.S.-Soviet détente. In a purportedly helpful move, the Soviet Union offered to sell the United States precast concrete modules for the building, supposedly to ensure that it would be up to code, and the United States accepted. But mid-construction inspections beginning in 1982, including X-rays, revealed that the Soviets were turning the building into a huge antenna, with some bugs so sophisticated they could transmit each keystroke from the embassy’s IBM Selectric typewriters. After that, the top floors of the embassy were torn down and replaced by a secure “top hat” of four floors. The project took more than four years—and was done by American contractors.

PROCEED WITH THE ASSAULT Just two weeks after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the CIA began inserting personnel into Afghanistan to prepare for the U.S. response to Osama bin Laden and his compatriots in Al Qaeda, and the agency is still active there. The museum’s Afghan Gallery has objects ranging from the patriotic—such as the “Don’t Mess With the U.S.” T-shirt an agency logistics officer bought after she found out she would be deployed in 2003—to the bemusing, such as the photograph of a CIA K-9 explosives-detection team in which the security measures extend to obscuring not only the faces of the three men in the frame, but the dog’s face as well. Among the most sobering are those related to the hunt for bin Laden.

The search took ten years, from bin Laden’s disappearance into the Afghan mountains soon after 9/11 to the CIA’s picking up the trail of a courier that led to a compound in Abbottabad, in northeastern Pakistan, in 2011. Surveillance photographs showed a tall man occasionally pacing in the compound’s courtyard. Could it be bin Laden? The agency developed evidence that it was, but analysts could not be sure. After an extensive debate, the Obama administration made a decision: Any assault would be made by a team of Navy SEALs working under the aegis of the CIA.

Technicians at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, mapmakers for the intelligence community, built three scale models of the compound, Hiley said. The original was used to brief the assault team and President Obama; of the two created for the historical record, one is in the CIA museum. The SEALs also trained on a full-scale mock-up at an undisclosed CIA site. “We don’t say where the training on the mock-up took place, but it was one of the CIA’s covert sites,” Hiley said. The training was widely reported to have taken place in North Carolina. The assault team destroyed parts of the mock-up every day, Hiley said, but it was rebuilt.

At the CIA, then-director Leon Panetta awaited word from the White House. If anything went wrong, President Obama would take the blame, but so would he. At 10:35 a.m. on April 29, 2011, Panetta got a call from the president’s national security adviser. He reached for a sheet of stationery bearing the words, “The Director, Central Intelligence Agency, Washington, D.C. 20505” and began writing a memo for the record, which is preserved under glass at the museum:

“Received phone call from Tom Donilon who stated that the President made a decision with regard to AC1 [Abbottabad Compound 1]. The decision is to proceed with the assault....The direction is to go in and get Bin Ladin and if he is not there, to get out. Those instructions were conveyed to Admiral McCraven at approximately 10:45 AM.” In the moment he added an extra “c” to the name of then-Vice Adm. William H. McRaven, commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command.

The raid proceeded shortly after 1 a.m. on May 2 in Pakistan. After it succeeded, some of the SEALs told agency debriefers the mock-up had been so accurate they felt as if they’d been to the compound before. The museum has two artifacts from Abbottabad: a brick from bin Laden’s compound and an assault rifle, a Russian-made AKMS modeled on the Kalashnikov AK-47 but, for reasons unknown, with counterfeit Chinese markings. “The rifle was found next to bin Laden when he was killed,” Hiley said. “So we assume it was his rifle.”

Single Shot

The Liberator, or FP-45, never had the cachet of the silent Hi-Standard .22—it fired just one .45-caliber bullet, and that bullet had a tendency to wobble off course beyond a range of 25 feet. But the weapon was designed to be air-dropped to resistance forces behind enemy lines, as much for its psychological value as its dubious firepower. “The idea was, you would use the gun to liberate a better weapon from an enemy,” Hiley explained. In the summer of 1942, “GM made a million of these in three months, and thousands were shipped to China.” The staff of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower had little enthusiasm for the weapon, and authorized the dropping of only 25,000, for the French resistance.

Single-Handed

The Minox, produced in Latvia in the 1930s and in Germany after World War II, became the classic spy camera. But there was a problem: “The Minox was too big for spies in the 1960s,” Hiley explained. “The challenge for us was a camera that could be used with one hand,” the better to disguise the photographing of documents if someone walked in unexpectedly on a spy at work.

So the CIA’s Technical Services Division designed two subminiature cameras for photographing documents. They resemble long cigarette lighters, and can indeed be operated with one hand. They used Minox cassettes loaded with Kodak 3410 thin-base film. (For camera buffs: The shutter was fixed at 1/100 of a second and each camera had an 8.2mm f/3.6 lens.) The first camera had a capacity of 100 pictures, the next generation 200. How the techs doubled the picture capacity without making the camera bigger is still classified, according to the CIA.

In the 1960s, CIA technicians developed a microdot camera that clips to the edge of a desk. The device resembles a quarter with a vertical antenna. It can capture 11 images that fit on a period no bigger than the one at the end of this sentence.

Counter Spies

During the Vietnam War, the CIA recruited Laotian trail watchers to count troops, weapons and supplies moving south from North Vietnam along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Agency technical experts developed a hand-held counter for them, called the HARK, which was about as big as a present-day tablet computer and could transmit data to an airplane overhead. But since many of the watchers could neither read nor write, the CIA technicians used icons to represent soldiers, weapons, vehicles—even elephants. “The HARK I had an elephant,” Hiley told me. “We only have the HARK II,” which does not.

Signals in the Sand

In April 1980, President Jimmy Carter sought to end the Iran hostage crisis by sending in Special Operations forces to rescue the 53 captives held in the U.S. embassy in Tehran. For the mission, the CIA developed a concealed landing light with an infrared coating to guide aircraft to a landing strip in darkness. The rescue attempt became one of the major failures of Carter’s presidency: The mission was aborted when only five of eight helicopters arrived intact at the staging area, and it turned into a disaster when a helicopter, its pilot blinded by sand kicked up by the rotors, crashed into a C-130 fuel transport plane and eight servicemen were killed. Despite the failure of the operation, the landing lights, which were modified marine buoys, worked as intended—and became prototypes of the runway markers Special Operations forces still use.

The Tiny Eavesdropping Bug

Developed by CIA’s Office of Research and Development in the 1970s, this micro unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was the first flight of an insect-sized vehicle (insectothopter). It was intended to prove the concept of such miniaturized platforms for intelligence collection.

Insectothopter had a miniature engine to move the wings up and down. A small amount of gas was used to drive the engine, and the excess was vented out the rear for extra thrust. The flight tests were impressive. However, control in any kind of crosswind proved too difficult. -- T.A. Frail

1968 Flyaway Kit

This briefcase contained the basic tools a photointerpreter might need to conduct imagery analysis in the field. --  T.A. Frail

Message in a Tube

Lamson Corporation, Syracuse, NY, installed a pneumatic-tube mail-delivery system in the Original Headquarters Building (OHB) during its construction. The system had more than 30 miles of 4‑inch-diameter steel tubing. At that time, this system was one of the world’s largest.

The original system had about 150 receiving/dispatching stations throughout OHB. Shown here is one of the many vacuum-driven carriers that sped along the system, moving mail from one station to another.  The system operated from 1962 until 1989.

"Dead" Drop

Communication between agents and their handlers always poses a risk. A “dead” drop allows secure communication by one person leaving and the other person picking up material later at a prearranged location. This eliminates the need for direct contact. 

What looked like a dead rat was actually a dead drop, used for sending or receiving communications between agent and handler. We are told the dead rat drop sometimes needed tabasco sauce poured on it to discourage cats from interfering with the exchange. --  T.A. Frail

World Trade Center Safe Drawer

This safe drawer came from the rubble of one of the World Trade Center buildings.  Luckily, the safe occupants escaped safely before the building collapsed late in the afternoon on 11 September 2001.  An eyewitness described the recovery of the drawer: 

"When you think about breaking a steel safe…the force that crushed those buildings’ floors just must have been incredible…the drawer part was melted to the body part of the safe.  The temperature had been so hot [inside the building that] it literally melted the safe into one piece…they estimated that the temperature was something like 1,600° to 1,800°or 1,900°.…They found a little bit of paper, some identification badges, some hard drives, a few components of electronic equipment, some twisted pieces of safe, but they didn’t find very much.…Not when you considered how much was there."--  T.A. Frail

Hollow Spike Dead Drop

This concealment device has been used since the 1960s to hide money, maps, documents, microfilm, and other items.  The spike is waterproof and mildew-proof and can be shoved into the ground or placed in a shallow stream to be retrieved at a later time. --  T.A. Frail

Tessina Model L

This Swiss-manufactured Tessina Model L was a commercial, twin-lens reflex camera with adjustable focus, aperture, and shutter speed. A Cold War classic—its compact size made it ideal for bodyworn or other space-constrained casing surveillance operations. --  T.A. Frail

Museum Geography

Painting of the Old Masters, originals of Antiquity and the East, collection of casts

Today: 11:00-21:00, entry 20:00

Painting of the French Impressionists, Post-Impressionists and masters of the early XX century

Today: 10:00-17:00, entry 16:00

Sviatoslav Richter Memorial Apartment is located in Bolshaya Bronnaya Street 2/6, Apt. 58, Floor 16

Today: 14:00-20:00

Museion Educational Centre is located in the old city manor

Today: 11:00-18:00

The atmosphere of the artist’s life in Tarusa, films and documentary materials Workshop is located in Tarusa town, Paustovskogo street, 15

Today: is closed

the branch occupies an architectural landmark dating back to the mid-19th century — the Arsenal of the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin. Today the Arsenal is a space for an artistic communication of professionals, experts, and contemporary art lovers.

The branch is active as a project-based entity.

The Baltic branch is Russia’s westernmost NCCA network branch active in the contemporary art field. Besides from exhibiting best of Russian and foreign contemporary artworks, the branch creates its own art pieces.

The branch hosts exhibitions, implements educational programs and cooperates with local artistic community through organizing exhibitions, portfolio reviews, workshops and art residences.

NCCA Vladikavkaz is the only institution in the region in the field of contemporary art.

The Siberian branch is focused on creating conditions for local contemporary art development, as well as synchronizing modern cultural processes in Siberia with the international context of the current creative agenda.

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THIS TRIP IS NOT CURRENTLY SCHEDULED Over the years, Amy has developed and operated trips to a variety of destinations including this one, but not all trips are offered every year. If you are interested in joining a scheduled departure of this trip in the future, please send us an email and let us know. Click to send us an email or use the form at the bottom of this page.

We can organize and operate this trip as a private group departure with a minimum group size of 8 persons. Start organizing your private Russia art adventure here .

Best time to travel: June for the “White Nights” Best gateway city: Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia Moscow and St. Petersburg Slide Show

Experience the art treasures of Moscow and St. Petersburg with guide, Amy Osaki. Begin in Moscow, continental Europe’s largest city, the seat of the government of Russia, and now home to over twenty billionaires! View iconic sites such as the Kremlin (which began as a fortress in the eleventh century), Red Square, and the sixteenth century St. Basil’s Cathedral. Then explore the art masterpieces at the Tretyakov Gallery, the National Museum of Russian Fine Art encompassing works from the eleventh to the twentieth century. Visit the Armory at the Kremlin filled with Imperial treasures including Faberge eggs once exchanged by the tsar and tsarina at Easter. Conclude your Moscow experience at the quiet seventeenth century Novodevichy Convent, one of many World Heritage sites included in the trip.

After a short flight, continue the trip with five days in St. Petersburg where you’ll be immersed in the opulence of Imperial Russia. Established by Tsar Peter I in 1703, St. Petersburg (known as Petrograd and Leningrad for most of the twentieth century) was the capital of the Russian empire for over two hundred years until the Russian Revolution of 1917. The Hermitage—said to be the largest art museum in the world with a collection of over three million objects housed in four main buildings—rivals the Louvre in Paris for both the quantity and quality of its treasures. Founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great, and open to the pubic for over two hundred years the museum is so vast that we’ll spread our visit out over several days and organize it by different themes. Also on the schedule is a visit to the Peter and Paul Fortress—the original citadel above the river founded in 1703—as well as some of the Imperial palaces in and around St. Petersburg such as Peterhof, a World Heritage Site. Peter I hired French architects to work on his many palaces, including Jean Baptiste Le Blond who worked with Andre Le Notre at Versailles. Consider enhancing your Russian experience by purchasing tickets to a performance—perhaps a ballet at St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre (also known as the Kirov).

Day 1 Overnight in Moscow Arrive in Moscow and transfer to your centrally-located hotel, your base for the next two nights. Enjoy an afternoon and early evening walk through Red Square (Krasnaya Ploshchad) past St. Basil’s Cathedral, and GUM department store all of which are back-dropped by the walls of the Kremlin fortress. Remember that we are here during the fabled “White Nights” when the summer days linger with light-filled evenings.

Day 2 Overnight in Moscow Within the walls of the Kremlin fortress, visit the Armoury Museum, one of Moscow’s oldest museums established at the start of the nineteenth century. The Kremlin Armoury was the royal arsenal; it produced and stored the weapons, jewelry and other regalia of the tsars. The museum’s collection encompasses four thousand items of applied art from Russia and elsewhere dating from the early fourth century to the twentieth century. Later in the day, visit the collection of masterpieces of the renowned Tretyakov Gallery. The Tretyakov collections were begun by the philanthropist Tretyakov brothers in the early nineteenth century. The gallery is recognized by many as a key repository of Russian art spanning the nation’s artistic tradition from early Orthodox icons to art nouveau, impressionist, and avant-garde works.

Day 3 Overnight in St Petersburg Enjoy a morning visit to the sixteenth century Novodevichy Convent named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2004. The convent’s name is sometimes translated as “New Maidens’ Monastery” to differentiate is from the convent within the walls of the Moscow Kremlin. Surrounded by white crenellated walls, this complex of churches has remained essentially intact since the seventeenth century. Here you’ll find the five-domed Cathedral of Our Lady of Smolensk with its spectacular iconostasis and the tall, red and white Gate Church of the Transfiguration which is often cited as a fine example of “Moscow Baroque” architecture. The neighboring Novodevichy Cemetery is the final resting place of the likes of Anton Chekhov, Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Boris Yeltsin. This afternoon fly to St. Petersburg, Russia’s second largest city situated on the banks of the Neva River where it empties into the Gulf of Finland.

Day 4 Overnight in St Petersburg Start of your exploration of St. Petersburg with a visit to the Peter and Paul Fortress, the original citadel of St. Petersburg. The fortress was built to the designs of the Swiss Italian architect Domenico Trezzini in the early eighteenth century. Trezzini’s Peter and Paul Cathedral dominates the fortress grounds and its iconic golden spire punctuates into the Baltic sky. Later visit the Yusupov Palace on the Moika, acclaimed as an “encyclopedia of St. Petersburg aristocratic interior design.” The palace was the home of the Yusupov family from 1830 and 1917 and was the place where Grigori Rasputin, a spiritual mentor to Tsar Nicholas II and the Royal Family in the early 20th century, was assassinated. A visit to the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood built between 1883 and 1907 rounds out the day. The church was built in “Russian Revivalist” architectural style by Tsar Alexander III in commemoration of his father, Alexander II. The church occupies a conspicuous location on St. Petersburg’s Griboedov Canal and contains 7,500 square meters of mosaics; the interior walls and ceilings are completely covered by mosaics.

Day 5 Overnight in St Petersburg Seeing St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum in a day would be like trying to see the Smithsonian in a day! Rather than a forced march through the galleries at a rapid pace, we will slow down and savor the masterpieces. Remember, there are nearly seven miles worth of exhibitions! Today we focus on “Imperial Russia,” touring the rooms decorated for members of the Russian Imperial Family and viewing the art they commissioned and collected. This is the art that influenced the style of the grand palaces of the era. View the Grand Suite of rooms, Peter I’s collection of gold, and the jewelers art owned by the Russian Imperial Family (including Fabergé eggs, gold and diamonds). Here, too, are the rooms of Catherine II and her son Paul I with their fifteenth to eighteenth century French paintings and sculpture (Poussin, Watteau, Fragonard, Chardin, and Houdon).

Day 6 Overnight in St Petersburg Return for a second dose of the Hermitage! Today is dedicated to the famous European masterpieces exhibited at the Hermitage. Feast your eyes on memorable works by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Tintoretto, Tiepolo, Velazquez, and El Greco. At the Hermitage, you can revel in Rembrandt; there are twenty of his works in the museum’s collection. After lunch, enjoy the eighteenth to twentieth century masterpieces of Monet, van Gogh, Gauguin, Rodin, Picasso, Matisse and Kandinsky. Digest the art and reflect on this unique collection of human creations. Consider an evening performance, possibly at the Mariinsky Theatre.

Day 7 Overnight in St Petersburg Journey by hydrofoil across the Gulf of Finland to experience Peter I’s palace at Peterhof, a series of palaces and gardens that evoke comparisons with Versailles which Peter visited in 1715. Begun in 1714 with the construction of the Monplaisir palace and expanded by later Imperial generations who added Rococo and Neo-classical elements, Peterhof is now a World Heritage Site. The creative mastery of architects, engineers, artists and craftsmen from throughout Europe is on display here and all is choreographed to celebrate water in homage to Peter, the maritime emperor.

Day 8 Overnight in St Petersburg Go behind the scenes with an excursion to the Hermitage Museum’s Staraya Derevnya Restoration and Storage Center on the right back of the Neva River north of Kamenny Island. This vast treasure house is only accessible by private tour. Later, travel to Vasilvesky Island across the river from the Hermitage to visit Menishkov Palace completed in 1721 and now the oldest stone building in St. Petersburg. Enjoy a farewell dinner this evening.

About your guide : Amy Osaki holds a master’s degree from the Winterthur Museum. She studied art at the Louvre Museum in Paris and worked as a museum curator for over a decade including six years at the Portland Art Museum. She is an award-winning art educator who has led art trips around the world for the last fifteen years with Walking Softly Adventures. Many of these trips were offered for graduate credit from Portland State University where she is an Adjunct Professor.

Resources for Further Learning

• Preview part of the collection of the State Tretyakov Gallery at its website.
• Learn more about the Moscow Kremlin .
• Prepare yourself to experience the Hermitage . You can even shop on-line at the museum’s on-line museum store!

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