Visit the Smithsonian National Postal Museum during your time in Washington, D.C.! The museum will offer a special introduction for AAS 2018 conference attendees on Thursday, March 22 from 10:00am to 12:00pm.

For more than a century and a half, the world relied on postal services and postage stamps for the exchange of ideas between distant people. More than just enabling global conversations, however, postage stamps could be and often were an integral part of the discussion. The governments that created them carefully encoded philosophical, cultural, historical, and social messages they wished to project at home and abroad.

Join the Smithsonian National Postal Museum’s Chief Curator of Philately for an orientation to opportunities for semiotic and iconographic research in the museum’s collections of the stamps and postal history of Asia.

After the program, coffee and doughnuts will be served and an optional docent-led tour of the museum will be offered.

The Smithsonian National Postal Museum is located at 2 Massachusetts Avenue, N.E., next door to Union Station. It is easily accessible to conference attendees arriving in Washington on Amtrak and from the conference hotel (take the Metro Red Line from Woodley Park–Zoo Station toward Glenmont, 6 stops to Union Station).

Admission to the museum and attendance at this event are free, but preregistration is encouraged. If you’d like to join us, please send an e-mail with your name and the number of attendees to Dr. Susan Smith at SmithSu@si.edu.