Color our Collections

"Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud."
               —Maya Angelou

Hey everyone, it's National Color Day—a day to appreciate the natural colors of the world and their effect on us. Fun fact, in 1988, the American Psychological Association published an article called "The Dark Side of Self and Social Perception: Black Uniforms and Aggression in Professional Sports," which found that sports teams who wear black tend to get penalized more than those who don't. My favorite hockey team was one of the teams mentioned in the survey, although their black jersey is an alternate. Still, I can verify that all calls made against them when they wear the black jerseys are, in fact, soft.

Unfortunately, a lot of the collection items on our site are decidedly not colorful. It's a drawback of having photos from before the widespread use of color photography. So I did the only reasonable thing, I downloaded a bunch of our CC0, part of the Smithsonian Open Access portal, images and turned them into coloring pages. Feel free to print them out and add a little color to the world. Just don't forget to share them with us!

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Download the Old Executive Office Building page here.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Download the Alexander the Great tapestry page here.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Download the cougar page here.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Download the kangaroo page here.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Download the cherry blossom page here.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Download the fish sketch page here.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Download the bird head pages drawings page here.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Download the bird drawing page drawings page here.

Related Resources

• "The Castle": Pictures from the 19th Century A Coloring Book, Smithsonian Institution Archives
• Wilson Bentley Coloring Activity, Smithsonian Institution Archives