SITES opened its 1,000th exhibition in 1977, began its newsletter, Siteline, and launched several initiatives, including the first traveling exhibition from the National Air and Space Museum, Exhibition Flight; the first major exhibition developed with the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, Close Observation: Selected Oil Sketches by Frederic E. Church; and the first collaboration between SITES and the Phillips Collection.

In quick succession during the early to mid-1980s, SITES premiered numerous exhibitions that received national and international acclaim. Many were considered “blockbuster” shows and involved considerable outside funding, elaboratepublications, and public programming.
The following examples illustrate the breadth and range of topics:

Renaissance of Islam: Art of the Mamluks featured more than 100 artifacts from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, drawn from collections in Egypt, Syria, England, France, Canada, and the U.S.

American Impressionism premiered at the Musée du Petit Palais in 1982 as the first exhibition of American Impressionist paintings ever shown in Paris. The exhibition also traveled to East Berlin, Vienna, Bucharest, and Sofia.

The Precious Legacy: Judaic Treasures from the Czechoslovak State Collections was a landmark North American tour of objects confiscated during the Holocaust. Its handsome book won a prestigious literary award for non-fiction Judaic studies.

Treasures from the Smithsonian Institution, presented in 1984 at the Edinburgh International Festival in Scotland, was the largest exhibition the Smithsonian had ever sent abroad and the first to combine materials from all of the constituent museums—260 objects in all.

Ebla to Damascus: Art and Archaeology of Ancient Syria, an exhibition of 281 objects spanning 10,000 years of history, marked the first time that antiquities from Syria had been shown in North America.

And finally, Hollywood: Legend and Reality, which contained more than 400 objects from national and international collections, was presented at two Smithsonian museums, opening in 1986 at the National Museum of American History and shown later at the Cooper-Hewitt in New York City.

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