Television collections at the Smithsonian Institution span near-all museums and research centers, attesting to the medium's profound impact on American and global society. From Nam June Paik's iconic and unmistakable cathode ray tube sculptures and installations (like 1995's "Megatron/Matrix" held by the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM)), to artefactual props from iconic TV programs (like The Muppets, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and Star Trek), to the vast moving image collections of shows like the landmark arts and culture series Black Journal and early kinescope records of broadcasts from the DuMont network, the Smithsonian is tuned into TV!
To celebrate the United Nations' "World Television Day" on November 21st, here are some of our favorite online TV-related collections as selected by staff of the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives Audiovisual Media Preservation Initiative.