SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, an establishment dedicated to research, education, and national service to science, the arts, and humanities. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., it was chartered by Congress in 1846 pursuant to the will of the Englishman James Smithson (1765–1829). In 1826, Smithson, who was the illegitimate son of Sir Hugh Smithson, Duke of Northumberland, and Elizabeth Keate Macie, descended from Henry VII, bequeathed his fortune, amounting to about $550,000 (a considerable sum for those days), to "the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an Establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." Smith-son's motivations for this unusual bequest are conjectural, but several influences may have been involved: disillusionment due to the circumstances of his birth, which, in Britain, barred him from certain privileges and inheritances; his keen interest in science (he was an Oxford graduate, a competent chemist, and a member of the Royal Society); his faith in America, generated perhaps from his friendship with Americans traveling in Europe, although he himself never visited the United States; and perhaps the general revolutionary temper of the times, which impelled him to do something original for the benefit of humankind and make his name remembered long after, as he said, "the names of the Northumberlands and Percys are extinct and forgotten."

When, after much debate, Congress accepted the gift, there began a long argument as to what form the institution should take in order to conform most clearly with Smithson's broad prescription. The format that finally evolved and was enacted on 10 August 1846 was due in large part to John Quincy Adams, who was then back in Congress following his presidency and whose articulate championing of science and education was most effective.

The Smithsonian derives its support both from appropriations from Congress and from private endowments, of which Smithson's gift was the nucleus. It is considered an independent establishment in the role of a ward of the U.S. government, the trustee. It is governed by a board of regents made up of the vice-president and chief justice of the United States (ex officio) and three U.S. senators, three representatives, and six citizens named by Congress. The regents elect one of their number as chancellor and choose a secretary, who is the executive officer, or director, of the institution. Since its founding the Smithsonian has had eleven secretaries: Joseph Henry, professor and physicist at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton), noted for his research in electromagnetism, who served from 1846 until his death in 1878; Spencer Fullerton Baird, biologist, secretary from 1878 until his death in 1887; Samuel Pierpont Langley, astronomer and aviation pioneer, from 1887 to 1906; Charles Doolittle Walcott, from 1907 to 1927; Charles Greeley Abbot, astrophysicist, from 1928 to 1944; Alexander Wetmore, biologist, from 1945 to 1952; Leonard Carmichael, psychologist, from 1953 to 1964; S. Dillon Ripley, zoologist, from 1964 to 1984; Robert McCormick Adams from 1984 to 1994; Michael Heyman from 1994 to 1999; and Lawrence Small beginning in 2000.

Henry's original program for the Smithsonian and its plan of organization were based on his interpretation of how best to "increase" and "diffuse" knowledge in order "to carry out the design of the testator." To increase knowledge he proposed to "stimulate men of talent to make original researches, by offering rewards for memoirs containing new truths" and "to appropriate a portion of income for particular researches, under the direction of suitable persons." To diffuse knowledge it was proposed to "publish a series of periodical reports on the progress of different branches of knowledge" and "to publish occasionally separate treatises on subjects of general interest." These objectives have continued to guide the activities of the institution. But this simplicity of design did not last long, and the institution proliferated as Congress began assigning the institution jobs to do and "bureaus" to administer. In 1879, a large rambling structure adjoining the Smithsonian was begun to house exhibits for the National Museum, an outgrowth of the Centennial Exposition of 1876 at Philadelphia. Eventually, the National Museum came under the administration of the Smithsonian. Over the years, the Smithsonian has assembled under its wings yet more museums, art galleries, and other branches, making it perhaps the largest museum and cultural complex in the world. The Smithsonian occupies several buildings flanking the Mall between Fifth and Fourteenth streets and other buildings in several other parts of the city and in a number of places outside Washington, including New York City; Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Panama.

The Smithsonian includes sixteen museums. Nine of these are located on the National Mall. They are: the Smithsonian Institution Building, known as the Castle; the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the Freer Gallery of Art, both dedicated to Asian art; the Arts and Industries Building; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; the National Air and Space Museum; the National Museum of African Art; the National Museum of American History; and the National Museum of Natural History, the oldest of the Smithsonian's branches. The National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum have, since 1968, occupied the Old Patent Office Building. The Anacostia Museum and Center for African American History and Culture, the National Zoological Park, the National Postal Museum, and the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum are located elsewhere in Washington, D.C. The Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum and the National Museum of the American Indian are located in New York City. A National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., is due to open on the Mall in the early twenty-first century. The Smithsonian also oversees eight research centers: the Archives of American Art, the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, the Conservation and Research Center, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, the Center for Materials Research and Education, the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, the Smithsonian Marine Station at Fort Pierce, and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. The International Exchange Service was initiated in 1850 by Baird and Henry to facilitate the international exchange of scientific and other scholarly publications. There are also three agencies technically under the aegis of the Smithsonian but administered by separate boards of trustees: the National Gallery of Art (established 1941), the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (opened 1971), and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (1968).

The Smithsonian museums, embracing all fields of science, technology, and the arts, are famous for their many unique objects on display. In addition to such showpieces as Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis, the First Ladies' inaugural ball gowns, the Hope Diamond, Benjamin Franklin's printing press, the original "star-spangled banner," and the giant model of the blue whale, the dozens of exhibit halls throughout the museums display much of humanity's knowledge of the earth and human civilization and culture. There are also vast study collections, numbering in the millions of objects and specimens, that form the basis of the research conducted not only by the large staff of Smithsonian scientists but also by students and researchers in history, technology, and the physical and natural sciences. The institution is equally famous for its worldwide exploration programs, which were initiated by Henry and Baird.

The first Smithsonian publication, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, was issued in 1848, and since that time there have appeared under the Smithsonian imprint (now called the Smithsonian Press) thousands of books, pamphlets, catalogs, bulletins, and periodicals in all branches of science, art, and technology. Most of them are scholarly publications, but a few are popular in nature. Smithsonian publications—some financed by government funds and some by the institution's private funds—are widely distributed to libraries, research institutions, and students. Since 1970, in conjunction with a subsidiary organization, the Smithsonian Associates, the institution has published a popular magazine, Smithsonian.

Since the early 1960s, the Smithsonian has expanded its activities, particularly in the field of public education, in an effort to identify the institution more closely with the academic world and with modern educational and research trends. Each of the museums and research centers now includes an Education Department, and, through a program dubbed Smithsonian Affiliates, the Smithsonian has arranged cooperative agreements with museums across the country. Smithsonian Productions creates and manages electronic media for the institution, and ongoing programs of lectures, films, workshops, tours, demonstrations, and performances allow daily access to the "nation's attic."

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bello, Mark. The Smithsonian Institution, a World of Discovery: An Exploration of Behind-the-Scenes Research in the Arts, Sciences, and Humanities. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993.

Goode, G. Brown, ed. The Smithsonian Institution, 1846–1896. The History of Its First Half Century. Washington, D.C., 1897; New York: Arno Press, 1980.

Oehser, Paul Henry. Sons of Science: The Story of the Smithsonian Institution and Its Leaders. New York: H. Schuman, 1949.

———. The Smithsonian Institution. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1983.

Paul H.Oehser/f. b.

See alsoAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science ; Archives ; Federal Agencies ; Foundations, Endowed ; Observatories, Astronomical ; Science Museums .

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

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN. The National Museum of the American Indian of the Smithsonian Institution (NMAI) began as the private collection of a wealthy New York banker, George Gustav Heye (1874–1957). In 1903 Heye began a half century of voracious acquisition of Native American artifacts, during which he dispatched agents throughout the Western Hemisphere to obtain objects and collections from Native peoples. In the first decade, Heye worked in collaboration with the University Museum in Philadelphia and with Franz Boas at Columbia University. In 1916, however, Heye established, over Boas's strenuous objections, his independent institution in Manhattan: the Heye Foundation and the Museum of the American Indian. The goal of the new museum was as simple as it was comprehensive: "the preservation of everything pertaining to our American tribes." Over the next fifteen years Heye established a publication series, an anthropological library, a storage facility in the Bronx, and a research and collecting agenda in archaeology and ethnography.

The death of two of Heye's major benefactors in 1928 and the onset of economic depression a year later effectively ended Heye's ambitious program of acquisition. Over the next twenty-five years Heye continued collecting and sponsoring expeditions, but on a greatly reduced level. After his death in 1957, Heye's institution fell into disrepair; when the museum's sad state came to public attention in the mid-1970s, nearly fifteen years of debate and negotiation ensued. This resulted finally, in 1990, in the transfer of the Heye artifact collection, archives, and library in their entirety to the Smithsonian Institution, where they constitute the core of the National Museum of the American Indian. The transfer also stipulated that human remains and funerary objects from the Heye collection be repatriated to Native peoples where possible.

Building upon its core collection of nearly one million artifacts, the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian preserves, studies, and exhibits the histories and cultures of Native American peoples; the NMAI also works in close collaboration with Native peoples to protect, sustain, and reaffirm traditional beliefs and encourage artistic expression.

There are several NMAI facilities. Opened in 1994, the George Gustav Heye Center of NMAI, located at the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in lower Manhattan, is an educational and exhibition facility with public programs of music, dance, and film. The Cultural Resources Center outside Washington, D.C., in Suitland, Maryland, invites Native and non-Native scholars to utilize its library and archival collections. The central facility—the Smithsonian's last museum on the Mall—was scheduled to open in 2003 and serve as the major exhibition space, as well as a venue for ceremony and education. Finally, a "virtual museum" is available through the NMAI Web sites.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Force, Roland W. Politics and the Museum of the American Indian: The Heye and the Mighty. Honolulu, Hawaii: Mechas Press, 1999.

"The History of the Museum." Indian Notes and Monographs, Miscellaneous Series No. 55. New York: Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, 1956.

Kidwell, Clara Sue. "Every Last Dishcloth: The Prodigious Collecting of George Gustav Heye." In Collecting Native America, 1870–1960. Edited by Shepard Krech III and Barbara A. Hail. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999, 232–258.

National Museum of the American Indian. Home page at http://www.nmai.si.edu.

National Museum of the American Indian Act, Public Law 101– 185, 101st Congress (28 November 1989).

Wallace, Kevin. "Slim-Shin's Monument." New Yorker (19 November 1960).

Curtis M.Hinsley

See alsoNative Americans .

National Museum of the American Indian institution devoted to the collection, preservation, and presentation of the culture of the indigenous populations of the Western Hemisphere, a division of the Smithsonian Institution . It was established by an act of Congress in 1989 with the collections of the former Museum of the American Indian/Heye Foundation, in New York City. That museum was founded in 1916 by George G. Heye (1874–1957) and was opened to the public in 1922. The museum currently comprises the main museum on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., a contemporary building designed by Native American architect Douglas Cardinal (opened 2004); a research center in Suitland, Md.; and the George Gustav Heye Center in New York City, which incorporates a film and video center. The museum's collection, which includes more than 800,000 items of historical, aesthetic, cultural, and religious significance and spans some 10,000 years of native heritage, includes ceramics, masks, dolls, wood and stone carvings, textiles, clothing, featherwork, baskets, beadwork, jewelry, traditional works on paper and canvas, and contemporary prints and paintings. The collection also features photographic images, historical administrative records, and videos, films, and audio recordings.

Smithsonian Institution. A research institution and educational centre founded by the bequest of the English scientist James Smithson (1765–1829) ‘for the increase and diffusion of knowledge’ and established by congressional act in Washington, DC, in 1846. Smithson was an illegitimate son of Hugh Smithson Percy, Duke of Northumberland, and it is thought to have been resentment over the circumstances of his birth that caused him to make the bequest to the USA rather than his native country: ‘My name shall live…when the titles of the Northumberlands…are extinct and forgotten.’ The Smithsonian administers many prestigious cultural organizations in Washington, including the National Gallery of Art, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Joseph H. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

Smithsonian Institution. A research institution and educational centre founded by the bequest of the English scientist James Smithson (1765–1829) ‘for the increase and diffusion of knowledge’ and established by congressional act in Washington DC in 1846. Smithson was an illegitimate son of Hugh Smithson Percy, Duke of Northumberland, and it is thought to have been resentment over the circumstances of his birth that caused him to make the bequest to the USA rather than his native country: ‘My name shall live…when the titles of the Northumberlands…are extinct and forgotten.’ The Smithsonian administers many prestigious cultural organizations in Washington, including the National Gallery of Art, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Joseph H. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

Smithsonian Institution US independent trust, based in Washington, D.C. Created in 1846, the Institution funds research, publishes the results of explorations and investigations, and preserves for reference more than 65 million items of scientific, cultural, and historical interest. Created in 1846, the Institution funds research, publishes the results of explorations and investigations, and preserves for reference over 65 million items of scientific, cultural and historical interest.

http://www.si.edu

Smithsonian Institution a US foundation for education and scientific research in Washington DC, opened in 1846 and now responsible for administering many museums, art galleries, and other establishments. It originated in a £100,000 bequest in the will of the English chemist and mineralogist James Smithson (1765–1829).