Smithsonian Institution

Smithsonian Institution, chartered by Congress in 1846 to promote “the increase & diffusion of knowledge.” Established after more than a decade of debate in Congress about the appropriate disposition of a bequest to the nation from the Englishman James Smithson, the Smithsonian's museums and less‐visible research facilities would ultimately dominate the central Mall west of the Capitol in Washington, D.C. With funding from Smithson's endowment, private gifts, and federal appropriations, the Smithsonian Institution operates, in fact, as the national museum of science, history, and art. It is governed by fourteen trustees who include (ex officio) the U.S. vice president and the chief justice of the Supreme Court.

Under the first secretary, the physicist Joseph Henry, who served from 1846 until his death in 1878, the Smithsonian promoted research and publication with emphasis on the sciences. In 1848, for example, Henry published a pioneering archaeological study, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi, launching a monograph series that ran until 1916. He and his staff offered a public lecture series, coordinated meteorological data gathered from around the country, and developed an international exchange that distributed publications from American learned societies worldwide. Henry's successor, the zoologist Spencer F. Baird, used a cadre of explorers and naturalists to build a substantial natural‐history collection that, coupled with the specimens and artifacts acquired from other countries after the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876, led to the creation of the U.S. National Museum. Under the third secretary, the astrophysicist Samuel Pierpont Langley, the Smithsonian established a research branch, the Astrophysical Laboratory (1890), in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a National Zoological Park (1891) in Washington, D.C.

The Smithsonian continued to grow in the twentieth century, despite some setbacks, including a failed effort to form a museum of science and industry in the 1920s. The Freer Gallery of Art (1923) became a center for the study and display of Oriental art. What some observers called the “nation's attic” added research branches, new museums on the Mall, and branch museums in Washington and New York City. Secretary S. Dillon Ripley (1963–1983) provided energy and vision that generated new museum buildings and provided for upgraded older facilities that included more visitor‐oriented shops. The National Museum of History and Technology (1965, since transformed into the National Museum of American History) became the preeminent center for research on artifacts and the history of science and technology. The National Collection of Fine Arts (with holdings dating from 1846) joined the collections of the National Portrait Gallery and has since 1968 been housed in the Old Patent Office Building. The National Air and Space Museum, whose new building opened in 1976, soon became the world's most visited museum. A few facilities, such as the Joseph H. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (1974), are under the Smithsonian's aegis but administered by separate boards of trustees. Together these agencies continued the tradition of encouraging research and, in most cases, furthered the diffusion of knowledge through their publications, public exhibitions, audiovisual materials, educational programs on and off site, and collaboration with other museums. The Smithsonian magazine, launched in 1970, provided another popular way to carry out the institution's mandate.
See also Museums.

Bibliography

G. Brown Goode , The Smithsonian Institution, 1846–1896: The History of Its First Half Century, 1897.
Paul H. Oehser , Sons of Science: The Story of the Smithsonian Institution, 1949.

Sally Gregory Kohlstedt