MERRION & SMITH

Trevor Merrion and William Bradford Smith are the co-founders of Merrion & Smith, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization specializing in educational programming that fulfills the United States Government’s cultural diplomacy objectives around the globe, particularly by highlighting world treasures in America’s national collections. Recently, on behalf of the U.S. Embassy in the Philippines, Merrion & Smith produced Allies for Freedom: Portraits of Filipino and American Courage in World War II, an exhibition commemorating the 75th anniversary of World War II and the liberation of the Philippines. They are also currently administering both a scholar exchange program and a manuscript conservation project at the Institute of Manuscripts of Turkmenistan on behalf of the U.S. Embassy in Turkmenistan with funding from the Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation.

Previously, Trevor Merrion and William Bradford Smith curated the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok’s major international exhibition, Great and Good Friends: Historic Gifts between the Kingdom of Thailand and the United States of America, 1818-2018, which was open from March to June 2018 on the grounds of the Grand Palace in Bangkok and which featured over 80 artifacts from America’s national collections. Earlier, they worked in the Smithsonian Institution’s Department of Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History, developing publications and programming in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Italy, Kazakhstan, Korea, Madagascar, Thailand, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, often in collaboration with the U.S. Department of State. Past projects also include collaborations with the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration, the Embassy of Kazakhstan, the Embassy of the Republic of Korea, and the Embassy of Turkmenistan.