The National Portrait Gallery is pleased to present "Ballyhoo! Posters as Portraiture." This exhibition explores how posters function as portraiture and interweaves the histories of poster aesthetics, celebrity promotion and advertising. Featuring 60 posters that range from John Wilkes Booth on a "Wanted" poster to a life-size stand-up of Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow in "Pirates of the Caribbean," "Ballyhoo!" will be on view at the National Portrait Gallery through Feb. 8, 2009.

“Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist,” on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum through Aug. 3, presents the first nationally touring retrospective of Aaron Douglas (1899–1979), one of the most influential visual artists of the Harlem Renaissance. Douglas vividly captured the spirit of his time and established a new black aesthetic and vision.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum today announced the opening of a special exhibition, The Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936.

Shakespeare Theatre Company Artistic Director Michael Kahn announced the Company’s 2008-2009 season, a lineup that includes Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night and King Lear as well as William Congreve’s The Way of the World, Lope de Vega’s The Dog in the Manger (the East Coast premiere of a translation and adaptation by David Johnston), Euripides’ Ion (the American premiere of a translation and adaptation by David Lan) and Noel Coward’s Design for Living.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian Native Arts Program will host community arts symposium “Finding Common Ground in First Nations Art: Bringing Together Cultural Traditions and Creativity” June 3, from 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. The daylong program is presented in collaboration with local artist Chloe French from Bellingham, Wash.

Harvard botanist Richard Evan Schultes (1915-2001) spent 12 years in the Colombian Amazon during the 1940s and early 1950s with the goal of exploring territory previously untraveled by any modern naturalist. He spent these years mapping uncharted rivers, living among two dozen Indian tribes and collecting some 25,000 botanical specimens, including 300 new species and more than 2,000 medicinal plants.

A mid-18th-century dress made of silk grown and spun in South Carolina by Eliza Lucas Pinckney, one of the most prominent women in American history, was recently given to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History by Pinckney’s direct descendants. The dress had been on loan to the museum’s costume collection since 1912.

2008 Pritzker Architecture Laureate Jean Nouvel will speak at the National Building Museum on Tuesday, June 3, 2008 at 7:00 pm as part of the Museum's popular Spotlight on Design lecture series.

New York's hip new theatre company 13P originated this fresh and fascinating comedy by one of their resident playwrights. Anne Washburn follows an American businessman lost in translation in this mysterious, multilingual romance.

Shakespeare Theatre Company Artistic Director Michael Kahn announced a revision to the Company’s 2008-2009 season schedule that includes the replacement of John Strand’s musical adaptation of Eugene Labiche’s An Italian Straw Hat with Noël Coward’s Design for Living. Kahn will direct Design for Living at the Company’s Lansburgh Theatre from May 12 to June 28, 2009.

Heralded as one of Washington’s favorite traditions, the Shakespeare Theatre Company Free For All presents Hamlet at Carter Barron Amphitheatre (16th Street and Colorado Avenue NW) in Rock Creek Park from May 22 to June 1, 2008. Originally directed by Artistic Director Michael Kahn, the production has been restaged by Alexander Burns and features returning cast members Jeffrey Carlson and Michelle Beck.

At the culmination of its 25th Anniversary, Dance/USA announces the selection of Rena Shagan to receive the Dance/USA Trustees Award. The award will be presented at the Dance/USA Honors Celebration Dinner, held at the Sheraton Hotel, Wednesday, June 11, 2008 in Denver, Colorado. The Honors Celebration Dinner will be the kick off of the 2008 Dance/USA National Roundtable.