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Melissa Chiu departs Smithsonian's Hirshhorn to lead Guggenheim Museum

Melissa Chiu, who has led the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., is stepping down to become director of New York's Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. She announced the move in April, describing it as her long-sought career goal. In a recent conversation with Fast Company, Chiu discussed how museums can play a role during periods of social and political tension.

Smithsonian essay traces how Benjamin Franklin used pseudonyms to speak freely

A Smithsonian magazine special report examines how Benjamin Franklin repeatedly invented fictional authorial personas—such as the widow Silence Dogood and the unwed mother Polly Baker—to publish opinions he couldn't voice under his own name. As a teenager, Franklin used the Dogood persona to sneak past his brother's ban on printing his writing, while Polly Baker's fictional courtroom defense skewered unequal treatment of unmarried mothers versus the men who fathered their children.