Making History Fun

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John Schwartzman, ASC captures a cavalcade of famous figures in the madcap comedy Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.

A hero's welcome greeted Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian when the produc- tion arrived at the titular museum in Washington, D.C., last May. "It was like being an American soldier in 1945 driving through Sicily, where everyone's throwing prosciutto and bottles of wine," recalls John Schwartzman, ASC, who joined director Shawn Levy to film the sequel. Smithsonian staffers were well aware that the orig- inal Night at the Museum (2006) had boosted attendance at New York's American Museum of Natural History by 20 percent, so they wel- comed …