Signs, props and light-up wristbands − the 2024 political conventions find a home in the Smithsonian collections

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Jon Grinspan, Smithsonian Institution; Claire Jerry, Smithsonian Institution, and Lisa Kathleen Graddy, Smithsonian Institution

(THE CONVERSATION) The cheering, clapping and speechifying are over. Historians from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History have returned after their trips to the 2024 political party conventions to collect materials – from balloons to banners to blinking wristbands – at each of them. For the last in a series of interviews with the political history curators, The Conversation’s senior politics editor, Naomi Schalit, spoke with Claire Jerry, Jon Grinspan and Lisa Kathleen Graddy to learn about their haul from the recent Democratic convention – and what observations they’d made, as historians, at both parties’ events.

Schalit: What have you been thinking about since you left the Democratic convention?

Graddy: I’m always fascinated...