National Museum of Natural History Unearthed

Volunteer Reflections on RACE: Are We So Different? (Part 2 of 2)

RACE Exhibition volunteers Samantha Ferm, Enid LaGesse, and Jane Hammel. Image courtesy of David D. LaCroix, Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

One of the most popular visitor destinations at Natural History in 2011 was RACE: Are We So Different? This temporary, traveling exhibition is a project of the American Anthropological Association, developed by the Science Museum of Minnesota. We spoke with some of our volunteers about their experience working with visitors in the exhibition.

Volunteers found that the wide range of topics covered in RACE: Are We So Different? made it easy to start conversations with visitors. Although much of the content focuses on the evolution of race in the history and society of the United States, the RACE: Are We So Different? exhibition is grounded in the science of human variation. For visitors and volunteers alike, this was a useful entry point. For example, Cassie Ghee met many who were very happy with the focus on science. “Most said that it was about time this information was made public to a wider audience,” because it rooted the discussion in a very profound way.

More broadly, Meg Wilder described the exhibition as “a new lens for viewing our common history and experiences,” one that moved many visitors. She noted that many conversations that she had with visitors were surprisingly intimate: “The exhibition led us beyond our unconscious biases and our initial assumptions.” David Marshall concurred, although he wasn’t surprised, for he believes that “there are many people of all backgrounds who want to discuss issues concerning race. While most of us discuss these issues in comfortable and safe environments, with friends and family, there are those who crave the opportunity to go beyond those conversations.” This opportunity crossed many lines, Lisa Walsh saw, and “every visitor took away a new piece of information or precious moment of learning.”

For many visitors, Natural History provided an ideal space for discussion. Jane Hammel was certain that the Smithsonian’s choice to host RACE spoke volumes to visitors. “Many wished it would remain here in some capacity, as do I,” she said. The two comments that Patricia McNally heard most frequently were “Why don’t we have more exhibits like this?” and “This exhibit is so important to starting a conversation about race.” She saw that people were excited by the richness and depth of the information in the exhibition, and many people spent more time in the exhibition than they anticipated. “The RACE exhibition has the potential of being the new ‘Galileo moment’ of our times,” thinks E. David Garcia, who wrote about his experiences for this blog in August. “It has the power to create a fundamental shift in our perception of how we see the world” and the people with whom we share it.

Visitors study Kip Fulbeck’s “Hapa Project,” one of the most popular parts of RACE: Are We So Different? Image courtesy of Charles Chen, Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

The potential for that fundamental shift lies in the exhibition’s capacity to enable and inform learning and discussion. Silas Otieno equates the exhibition with this outcome: “The RACE exhibition means conversation, the ability to bring people together in a neutral and conducive environment and just lay bare our thoughts and ideas on the issue of race.” To Enid J. LaGesse, “the RACE exhibition means we can more clearly understand and reframe our story as a united people, discuss openly our pain and healing, and dream of new solutions to age-old problems.”

If there was one feeling that all our volunteers shared, it was the sense that RACE: Are We So Different? tells a coherent and timely story in a way that opened a place for everyone to participate. “Everyone’s story is valid and worth being told,” said David Marshall. “If only we had the time and space to hear more of our stories, we might be able to better wrap our arms around the very complex notion of race.” Greg Jenkins found it “healthy, frustrating, bewildering, enlightening, learning, unbelievable, true, thought-provoking, heart-string pulling, angering, anxious, and necessary to our collective hearts and souls.” He paused for breath, and then continued: “It’s an American community story.” It is, finally, a story to which Natural History has been pleased to contribute.

We thank all our volunteers for their hard work and generosity in 2011. Over thirty of them plan to continue volunteering at Natural History and elsewhere in the Smithsonian. We’re very happy that they’ve decided to stay with us, and look forward to the many ways in which they will carry the energy and experience of RACE: Are We So Different? forward.

David D. LaCroix, Office of Education and Outreach

 

 

Volunteer Reflections on RACE: Are We So Different? (Part 1 of 2)

Volunteer Lisa Walsh talks with a visitor about a popular interactive station. Credit: Charles Chen, Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, image courtesy of Reginald Galloway, Princeton Club of Washington.

In 2011, RACE: Are We So Different? was one of the most popular visitor destinations at Natural History. This temporary traveling exhibition is a project of the American Anthropological Association, and was developed by the Science Museum of Minnesota. Several months before it opened, NMNH launched a campaign to recruit a new corps of volunteers to work in it.

When RACE opened on June 18, we had a diverse, motivated, and highly-trained group of seventy-five, ready to act as partners and sounding boards for visitors. Their role was to facilitate visitors’ experience of RACE, helping them to find entry points into the many conversations about science, history, and culture that the exhibition enabled.

For many of the seventy-five, this was their first experience volunteering in a museum. Over the nearly seven months that followed, the volunteers worked and talked with nearly 20,000 visitors––just a fraction, in fact, of the many from around the United States and the world who viewed the exhibition.

Now that RACE has left the Museum for its next destination (COSI in Columbus, Ohio), we asked our volunteers to reflect on their experience. What did it mean to them to serve as volunteers for this exhibition? How did it affect our visitors? And what is the larger meaning and significance of RACE: Are We So Different?

Programming coordinator David D. LaCroix and volunteer David Marshall (rear, dark jackets) discuss the RACE exhibition with a group of visitors, image courtesy of Reginald Galloway, Princeton Club of Washington.

Many, like Ginger Morrison, felt that their experience had enhanced their ability to talk about race and other charged topics. “The exhibition,” Morrison said, “presented a new vocabulary that I use to talk about race. It also encouraged me to more openly initiate discussions about race outside of the exhibit itself.” Other volunteers found new understanding of the ways in which race, privilege, and difference were relevant to their lives. “I think more about the roots of our social and geographical divisions,” said Lina Khan, “and the psychological impact from events that happened in the past.” Still others, including Patricia McNally and Greg Jenkins, saw the exhibition as an opportunity to learn or learn more about the role played by perception in the creation and sustaining of stereotypes and assumptions about race.

The opportunity to speak with visitors from all walks of life was very meaningful to our volunteers. It was challenging, immediate, and fruitful: “It has allowed me to feel the impact of race on people, instead of just hearing or reading about it,” Darius Salimi explained. “Being able to interact with all kinds of people about the topic in a dedicated space was a needed release of thoughts, emotions and energy for me.” “The exhibit itself and the people I have met made me realize how great of an impact a single word can have on one’s life,” said Lizzie Ehrreich.

In the next part of this two-part posting, learn more about how our volunteers felt about the science in the exhibition, how many visitors reacted, and what volunteers feel the RACE exhibition means.

David D. LaCroix, Office of Education and Outreach

The Beautiful Time: Photography by Sammy Baloji

The Beautiful Time opened on January 7^th, in the Focus Gallery of the permanent exhibit, African Voices.  It will be on view through 2012.

The archival photographs in this montage were probably taken in the early twentieth century. Porters, carrying loadsof firewood, are dressed in prioson uniforms and are attached to one another by rope. Baloji has placed the prisoners along the tracks of a now useless railway, signaling a loss of potential. Untitled, Sammy Baloji, 2006, Digital C print.

I first saw the Baloji exhibition, which was organized by the Museum for African Art, when it opened in New York over a year ago.  I was immediately struck by the beauty and the visual power of the work and by the stories Baloji’s works tell of history and memory, home and landscape, and work and wealth in the Congo.  These are all important themes in Africa today and they are themes of so many of the stories from around the continent that are told in African Voices.  I was delighted that we were able to bring the exhibit here to NMNH.

Baloji’s haunting photographs evoke the memory of the generations of Congolese whose labor built the vibrant copper mining industry—now lost—in the Katanga province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Throughout the first half of the twentieth century these mines were the second largest producers of copper in the world.

Baloji’s photographic collages juxtapose black and white archival photographs of Congolese mine workers against the background of color photographs of panoramic landscapes of the contemporary ruins of factories and copper mines.  Although the early workers—who wear prison garb and in chains in some of these photographs—came to the mines as forced labor for the colonial state, they had within a few decades become highly skilled and valued mine workers.  Their labor created Congo’s modern industrial era and in his artwork, Baloji’s celebrates these mine workers’ essential role in Congo’s prosperity.  At the same time that they celebrate this history, these photographs convey the dramatic power of tragedy—the loss of the hard earned prosperity that has been squandered over the past decades through mismanagement and corruption.

Baloji is part of a generation of young Congolese who were born nearly two decades after the end of the colonial era in 1960.  His work aims to understand and reconnect for contemporary Congolese and for us two strikingly different time periods –the colonial and the post colonial era.  His photographs give voice to those forgotten African workers who built Congo’s mining industry in the early part of the 20^th century, and they cry out against the recent deindustrialization in the Congo and elsewhere in Africa.

Last year, I had the opportunity to meet Sammy and his colleague Patrick Mudekereza, in Brussels. Patrick is a writer and a long time artistic collaborator with Baloji in the Congo.  I asked Patrick to share his thoughts on these photographs and we have included his commentary in the exhibit.  Asked about the meaning of the phrase, The Beautiful Time, Patrick explained, “Sammy’s photographs are not nostalgic celebrations of The Beautiful Time, a phrase we often hear the older generation use when referring to the golden age of the colonial mining industry.  Rather, Sammy’s pictures speak to today and imply a failure by our leaders to provide our people with a means to create a more beautiful time than before.”

Mary Jo Arnoldi, Curator, African ethnology and arts, Department of Anthropology, NMNH

Visitors React to the RACE: Are We So Different? Exhibit

Thousands of visitors have experienced the RACE: Are We So Different? exhibition since it opened at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. They walk through, linger here and there, talk with our volunteers and with each other.

Several hundred visitors have also shared their reactions, thoughts, and comments with us in writing. Their response has been overwhelmingly positive.

Visitors find many ways to express themselves, both on the topic of race and on the many entry points that the exhibition provides. They tell us that they are very glad to have an opportunity to learn more about race though science, history, and lived experience. They tell us how much they appreciate that the Smithsonian is hosting the exhibition and giving it such a wide audience. Many visitors write a lot, sometimes even filling both sides of a blank 4" x 6" notecard.

Most of all, they express diverse insights, points of view, and ways of engaging with a complex and often controversial topic.

These 25 cards (one of which is pictured at right) were written by visitors who came to the RACE exhibition in its first two weeks, June 18 through June 30.

Learn more about RACE: Are We So Different? at NMNH: http://www.mnh.si.edu/exhibits/race/

David D. LaCroix, Programming and Volunteer Training Coordinator, Office of Education and Outreach

A Crocheted Coral Reef in Davenport, Iowa?!

A crocheted coral reef in Davenport, Iowa?!  Yes, the Putnam Museum and IMAX Theater is borrowing the Smithsonian Community Reef  and installing it near the live coral reef tank in their Ocean Experience gallery.  It will be on view starting August 26.

We here at the Natural History Museum are thrilled, because it means that this spectacular crocheted piece – created out of 4,000 contributions by over 800 participants and assembled by 88 volunteers who donated 8,500 hours of their time – will be on public view for another five years.  While it’s on display, the Putnam will incorporate the reef into programs that teach thousands of school-aged visitors about the importance of ocean conservation.

Visitors viewing the Smithsonian Community Reef while it was on display at the National Museum of Natural History. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

We’re excited that the important messages of the reef will reach brand new audiences at the Putnam and hope that the reef continues to inspire awe and awareness of the beauty and the fragility of coral reefs around the world.  And we hope that the Smithsonian Community Reef’s many contributors and fans will go visit their old friend in Davenport.

The Smithsonian Community Reef is a satellite of the worldwide Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef Project created by Margaret and Christine Wertheim of the Institute For Figuring in Los Angeles.  It was made possible by the Quiksilver Foundation, the Embassy of Australia, and the Coral Reef Alliance.

Barbara Stauffer, Chief of Temporary Exhibitions, Exhibitions

My journey as a facilitator for RACE: Are We So Different?

E. David Garcia, volunteer for the RACE: Are We So Different? Exhibition. Image courtesy of C. Chen, Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

When I heard that the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History would host RACE: Are We So Different? in 2011, I was excited at the opportunity to participate. Like the other volunteers recruited for this temporary exhibition, my role is that of a facilitator. I engage and encourage visitors as they wrestle with what many consider profoundly divisive and emotional topics: the relationship of race and racism to science, history, and personal experience.

This role was very appealing to me for two reasons. First, it departs from the traditional approach to learning, where knowledge is transferred from an expert to the student. Facilitation is a matter of encouraging learners to take the responsibility of learning on themselves. Second, I relished the opportunity to engage in a complex, public conversation that would enrich our understanding of how and why race is so deeply embedded in our culture and in our consciousness. Although I approach my work at the Museum as an informed but objective partner to visitors, I am no exception to the conversation. I face the same challenge as anyone: approaching each conversation as a neutral observer despite the preconceived notions and assumptions shaped by our life experiences.

Talking about humanity's African origins with young visitors to the exhibition. Image courtesy of C. Chen, Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

As the son of a diplomat, I spent my formative years abroad, experiencing the rich cultural diversity of the Americas. But it wasn’t until I embarked on an international management career out of college that I began to really understand how race affected my life. My first assignment in Mexico gave me a deep appreciation for my Latino heritage. Ironically, in Mexico I was often told I was not Latino enough because of my years in the U.S. When my career took me to Jamaica, I was often considered there a “white mon,” a contrast to when I lived in the United States where at times I was not “white” enough. These changes in my status seem almost humorous because it would differ with every new country assignment. But the certainty with which people placed those labels is a troubling symptom of deeper problems. I’ve since been trying to do my part in helping to dismantle the race barriers that exist within our communities.

Kristine D. Smith and Leon M. Smith II discuss the exhibition with Garcia. Image courtesy of C. Chen, Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

Now that I live in the DC area, I find RACE: Are We So Different? an excellent venue to have a safe and elevated conversation on race. The most successful interactions I have had with visitors occurred when I was able to build rapport in simple but powerful ways: to genuinely listen, to empathize and show compassion, to accept others’ experiences, and to speak only with the aim of enabling more conversation. Through this approach, we create a welcoming learning environment in the exhibition where visitors can encounter the exhibition’s messages about race and test them against their personal experience. This often results in Ah-ha! moments of clarity and insight.

And so if we humans are to solve the many global challenges facing us, a good place to start is to remove barriers that have historically divided us. Our world is more interconnected now than at any time in human history. So a promising global future may well rest on our current ability to value all our human cultural richness, while learning from our past in tandem with our present knowledge. I think RACE: Are We So Different? is a positive step forward.

E. David Garcia, Volunteer, RACE: Are We So Different?

The Locker Project Comes to NMNH

Visitors to RACE: Are We So Different? at NMNH will see creative collaborations of a very personal nature: a set of four lockers, each holding an art installation made by students from DC schools.

Brenda Pérez adds a detail to the School Without Walls locker, as teammates Olivia Johnson, Adrian Espinola and Jahni Threatt look on. Image courtesy of C. Chen, Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

Lockers like these have been a part of the RACE traveling exhibition since it debuted at the Science Museum of Minnesota in 2007. The originals were made by students in St. Paul, but when planning for the exhibition's time here, we saw the lockers as an opportunity to highlight the talents of local students. With the help of schools, teachers, and parents, we reached out to four schools to ask them to create new lockers.

Each team began by reflecting on the same questions: What is race? What does race mean to you? Has your life been affected by race? Even for students immersed in the multicultural life of the District of Columbia, these were challenging questions.

A video in the exhibition says that “race” is a short word with a long history in the USA. Zainya Carter of CentroNia agrees, and thinks that this history is one thing that makes race tough to talk about now. “When you hear ‘race,’ at first, you don’t know what to say,” she notes. And trying to figure it out by yourself might not help much. “If you’re just one person working on it, you would have biases and certain ways of thinking that might create a one-sided view,” said Tessa Thomas of Bell Multicultural High School. Working with teachers, advisors, and other students gave each team the ability to create a unified response.

Flor Rivas, Mauricio Ventura, and Nelson Cruz of the CentroNia team get a little help with the installation of their artwork from Kim Moeller of the NMNH Exhibits staff (in blue sweater). Image courtesy of C. Chen, Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

But they had to work hard to achieve that unity. It took time to create an artwork that would flow from each student’s contribution, but also represent a vision that came from the whole team. “The decision-making process—deciding what we wanted to put in the locker and what we wanted the locker to represent—was both my favorite part and the hardest part,” said Olivia Johnson of the School Without Walls. Deja Rinehart of Kimball Elementary School put it very eloquently: “When you talk about it, it’s easy. But when you do it, it’s really hard!” Students from all four teams agreed with her.

The students drew strength from their belief that art has a role to play in national conversations. “Art can be your own documentary,” said Dennis Lazo of CentroNia. Diana Castillo of Bell thinks that people should know that art is a universal resource for making sense of the world. Even if “they tell me that they don’t have the talent to make art, I think that every person can draw or paint or make a ceramic piece,” she says. Moreover, working as part of an artistic team builds a kind of unity that can translate to our whole society. Zainya Carter believes that her CentroNia team “wanted to show people that we do work together, and we can all create a great idea or a great project.” “Everyone should see the lockers,” Jahni Threatt from School Without Walls insisted, because they will help them understand the world in a very personal way.

Two members of the Bell Multicultural High School team, Moshood Salu and Tessa Thomas, assemble their locker. Image courtesy of by C. Chen, Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

From the teachers’ point of view, the lockers have a clear set of messages. “People need to step out of thinking about themselves with a word—are you white, are you black, are you this, are you that,” said School Without Walls teacher Marni Leiken. CentroNia’s Director of Youth Programs, Kimberly Gaines, thinks that visitors will understand the lockers’ unifying statements. “We’re closer-knit than we actually think. We are more similar than we are dissimilar,” she believes. Bell art teacher Mandy McCullough thinks of her students’ problem-solving abilities as one of their greatest strengths, and that gives her great hope for the future. Kimball art teacher Eugene Foster feels the same way, and sees the lockers as a promising sign: “When they put together ideas like this, I think we’re going to be okay. And it feels amazing.”

RACE: Are We So Different? will be on view at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History from June 18, 2011 to January 2, 2012.

Members of the Kimball Elementary School team at work on their locker, titled “Flush the Foolishness”: Carl Goins, Michaela Brown, and Deja Rinehart. Image courtesy of C. Chen, Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

David D. LaCroix, Programming and Volunteer Training Coordinator, Office of Education and Outreach

 

Happy Birthday David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins!

Image courtesy of Donald Hurlbert, Smithsonian Institution.

The David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins celebrated its first birthday yesterday! Even our bronze sculptures joined in the celebration, like the picture of the Neanderthal mother and child at right. In honor of the exhibit’s first birthday, we ran a human-evolution-themed haiku and limerick contest on our Human Origins facebook and twitter accounts. Below are all the contest entries, including our four winners (listed at the top) who will each get a copy of the exhibit companion book “What Does It Mean To Be Human?" signed by exhibit curator, Dr. Rick Potts!
 
Winners

First place:
extant hands digging
reveal bits of extinct bone
cradle an ancestor
 
Second place:
There once was a man from Neander
Who often liked to meander
He had flatter feet,
and couldn't compete,
with Homo sapiens' delusions of grandeur.
 
Third Place:
Dark skull-eyes haunt me
did you hear the eagle strike
Taung Child so long dead?
 
Fourth Place:
There once was a man named Svante
whose sequencing was muy elegante.
When he examined the code
For the saucy story it told--
a Neanderthal is more than my Aunty.
 
Honorable Mentions:

Evolution Spring
Her breath takes flight
Deep unearthed sigh
 
There once was a boy from Turkana
who wasn’t as swift as the fauna.
But because he could sweat,
he kept the antelopes upset
and became a marathon runner.
 
A toothy young biped from Old’vai
Is now Paranthropus boisei.
Tho’ his body seems small,
His mandible’s tall
The crested, broad-faced OH 5.
 
Matthew Berger a young man spawned from an amoeba
Thought he would be like his dad and not Justin Bieber
He found some old bones
While clearing some stones.
Holy Cow! Australopithecus sediba!
 
There once was a planet called Earth...
and intelligence, O what a dearth.
But wildly variable seasons
provided plenty of reasons
for a habile hominid's birth.
 
Humanity is hominids
walking around in
designer suits
 
He’s muscular, thick-browed, and hairy
His demeanor is savage and scary
A Neanderthal, or
Is it just Jersey Shore?
Sure, we’re different, but really, not very.
 
The Neanderthal’s cranial ridge
Was a Cainial sign of orig
Inal sin, and the Ark
Kept him off for this mark.
(If you think that, I’ll sell you a bridge.)
 
A Neanderthal asked me to tea
To discuss our tall family tree.
He asked, "This srectus --
Does anything connect us?"
"You're both Homos," I said, "just like me!"
 
A young Mitochondrial Eve
Was the mother to all, we believe;
Her mtDNA
Is still with us today
A remarkable feat to achieve!
 
There once was a critter named “Hobbit”.
But Eckhardt told Tocheri to stop it.
It’s pathological you see,
your colored bones won’t fool me.
But for most, a new species they posit.
 
Bipedalism
consider the opening:
foramen magnum.
 
As we look at our similar shape
A conclusion that few can escape
(Save a few who still try
To believe in a lie):
It is clear, now, that man is an ape
 
A tiny young lady named Lucy
Wanted to eat something juicy
----
----
Her descendants include Gary Busey
 
lumbar lordosis
gut reduces, brain expands
take a walk with me
 
Fire with us tonight:
Tasty food and we sleep warm -
How do we keep it?
 
Other Entries:

Drowsy toolmaker
Glimmering lights above are
Yet to be noticed
 
Who was first meat eater?
Early Humans/Carnivores?
Yay! Big Brains for all.
 
Questions Need Answers.
What Makes You and I Human?
Just Go Ask Lucy!
 
It's Not About Size.
Chants Homo floresiensis
Kimono Dragon!
 
There once was a hominin name Lucy,
who walked across savanna bipedally.
In East Africa she did roam,
maybe a cousin or so to Homo.
From 3 million years past,
to Don Johanson’s hands fast,
her fossil informs evolutionary history.
 
There once was an amoeba called ken.
Who grew and then grew again.
All at once he began to walk like a man
Ken winked as he vowed the Higgs Boson would never be found and smiled as he teleported away away
 
Lucy stood upright,
Then human learned to use tools.
Now we tweet poems.
 
Homo habilis:
Lived in the Olduvai Gorge,
Handy with stone tools.
 
Our brains are shrinking
Possibly just efficient
Always evolving
 
There once was a chap named Potts
Looking for Hominids in all the different plots
He works with Dr. Pobiner
And they search here and there but moreover,
We like them as much as a ten year old likes tater tots.
 
A red-headed German named William
lived to tell his people he's Liam
he evolved bi-pedal
loves to strum his fiddle
but only the Irish can see him.
 
Darwin, said he, from apes
But what of in-between states?
Unique are we? One since bipedality?
We seek to know; We hope to show
And now impact our fate
 
Proud and bipedal
Tools - my source of power
Grateful for my thumbs
 
opposable thumb
The walking upright stomach
And a big brain too
 
small pearly teeth
maiden waist
a spark of fire
 
'Bout the time of Neanderthal Man,
Our progress in science began--
We took off right from there
And soon flew in the air--
Now the Right wants us back on the land.
 
there once was a girl,
named suzanna, who had zee,
not a banana
 
Oozing from a primordial swamp
Slithering across dry land
Walking in the shadow of giants
 
As Nelda grows older, she firmly maintains:
"Erectus was first to leave Africa's plains!"
No, she won't back down easy
When you mention Dmanisi
Oh, and don't get her started on Hobbit brains!
 
There's a family called Hominidae
Whose tree grows in some crazy way
Archaeologists fight
Over details all night
But we know we're all kin anyway

 

 

Animal Artistry: How Fine Arts Inspired Taxidermy at the NMNH

When the National Museum of Natural History first opened its doors to the public 100 years ago, the principal exhibits on display were not, as you might expect, about natural history. Instead, they featured paintings and sculpture—the objects that made up the recently established National Gallery of Art.

The art collections were displayed where today you find a Giant Squid, Basilosaurus, and a life-size model of a North Atlantic Right Whale—in the Sant Ocean Hall. Sculptures also adorned the Rotunda, where the Fénykövi Elephant stands. The art remained on exhibit in the building until the mid- 1960s (!), when it was relocated to the old Patent Office Building (where it now forms part of the collections of the National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum).

The entrance to the Hall around the time of its opening in March 1921, and the Hall in October 1964, close to the time of its transfer out of the building (note the Fénykövi Elephant in the distance). Image courtesy of Smithsonian Institution Archives.

Photo taken by Brown of his favorite sculpture, Sleeping Children, by William Henry Rinehart, 1869. Image courtesy of Smithsonian Institution Archives.

  Having art in the natural history building had some surprising benefits. For one Smithsonian taxidermist, William L. Brown, the opportunity to study fine sculpture every day on his lunch break provided an endless source of inspiration. Brown took every opportunity he could to visit a marble sculpture of two sleeping children that was in the Rotunda. He wrote, “I probably spent more time looking at the sleeping babes than any other exhibit in the museum. … The material used to make this masterpiece was so hard but looks so soft and I think it is the most beautiful thing I ever saw done by human hands.” You can see William Henry Rinehart’s Sleeping Children today in the Luce Foundation Center on the third floor of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

The taxidermy studio in the new National Museum building, c. 1911, with some of the Roosevelt Expedition specimens, including the East African lion group in the foreground; Image courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution Archives.

Brown first came to the Smithsonian in March 1908, paid at the rate of $25 a month. It was only a few years later that the animals from the Smithsonian-Roosevelt Expedition arrived in Washington—an event that proved very exciting for a young taxidermist-in-training.

 Years later, as chief taxidermist, Brown had the opportunity to work on many of these animals again, in the 1950s, when the original displays were taken down and the mounts restored and placed in new diorama-style installations, under the Exhibits Modernization Program.

William L. Brown holding the model of the hippo that he mounted in the early 1930s. Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution Archives.

Brown was most proud of the hippo that he and his fellow taxidermists (including Watson Perrygo) mounted in the early 1930s. On the back of this photo he wrote: “This was when I was best. 40 yrs old. As a taxidermist. I was the first person ever to mount a successful hippo and probably will be the last.” No doubt he would have been very pleased to know that taxidermist Paul Rhymer said just last year that it was the best preserved specimen he had ever seen!

One of the last projects Brown worked on, before his retirement in 1959, was the mounting of the Fénykövi Elephant, an enduring icon of the Museum. Brown’s papers are at the Smithsonian Institution Archives. 

Heather Ewing, Research Associate, Smithsonian Institution Archives

Diana of the Tides: A Sensation of Her Time

Diana of the Tides’ vibrant colors are reminiscent of paintings by Maxfield Parrish. Diana’s creator John Elliott knew Maxfield and his father Stephen from visits to the artists colony in Cornish, New Hampshire. Image courtesy of Smithsonian Archives.

Who would think that behind the west wall of NMNH's paleontology hall is a painting of a goddess that created a sensation when installed in 1910? Some of you who visited the museum fifty years ago may remember the captivating Diana of the Tides as she surveyed the hall.

Diana was painted by American artist John Elliott (whose mother-in-law was Julia Ward Howe, author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”) as a gift to the Smithsonian from Washington residents Mr. and Mrs. Larz Anderson. Diana was painted in Rome between 1906 and 1908, and she was finally unveiled at a special exhibition there in 1909 which was attended by King Victor Emmanuel II. Her charms were not lost on His Majesty as he told Elliott that he found “much in the picture genuinely of interest.”  The Chinese Minister also visited Diana, “to signify his profound Celestial veneration for the Fine Arts.”

Mr. and Mrs. Larz Anderson gave Diana to the Smithsonian in the hopes that their gift would inspires others to philanthropy. The Anderson’s house in Washington, D.C. is now the headquarters for the Society of the Cincinnati and is open to the public for tours. Image credit: Google Images/Public Domain.

The Andersons purchased Diana for the Smithsonian’s new “National Gallery of Art,” housed in what was then called the U.S. National Museum's grand north hall (now the Sant Ocean Hall of the National Musem of Natural History). Not to be confused with the National Gallery of Art as we know it today, the name “National Gallery of Art” was given to the Andrew Mellon collection that became the National Gallery of Art in 1937 – just to the east of Natural History. The Smithsonian’s collection was renamed the National Collection of Fine Arts and now is the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Prior to Diana’s arrival at Natural History she was stored in the Smithsonian Castle’s Regents Room for safekeeping while construction of the building was underway. Richard Rathbun, who oversaw the erection of the building, wrote to Mrs. Elliott “I am certain from all that has been said that Mr. Elliott’s painting will become such a feature of the new building that people will journey there for its sake alone.”

The 25 foot wide by 11 foot high canvas of Diana was placed in north hall for the opening of the new gallery on 17 March 1910.  As they are today, Smithsonian staff back then were given “other duties as assigned,” and Dr. William Henry Holmes, the Smithsonian’s eminent Curator of Anthropology who also  happened to be an artist, became Curator of this new gallery. Holmes reported that “Diana received much attention and much praise.” At the end of the year, Diana was moved to the paleontology hall (a tenuous connection was made with skeletons of sea mammals) where she remains to this day.  Diana was (and still is) part of the SAAM collection.

Diana surveys the paleontology hall in 1930. Hornblower and Marshall, the architects of NMNH, approved her location on the east wall. Image courtesy of Smithsonian Archives.

The original exhibit label described Diana standing “erect in her chariot, a rainbow-tinted sea-shell drawn by four white horses. The horses typify the flow of the tides, their action repeating and amplifying the rhythm of the breaking waves. The moon behind the goddess in the east rises through the purple shadows that follow the setting of the sun in the west.” In other words, Diana was ablaze in living Technicolor long before Technicolor was invented. She was unlike anything anyone had ever seen.

Diana was admired by many and by all accounts met with critical acclaim. Charles D. Walcott, the Secretary of the Smithsonian at the time, told the artist’s wife, “I never pass through the hall without stopping to look at it.” Even President Theodore Roosevelt was taken with the goddess. In a letter to Mrs. Elliott he wrote “by the way, tell your husband I like his mural painting in the Natural History Museum in Washington.”

Diana was on view until the early 1960s when she was obscured by a wall.  In 1979,  the hall was undergoing renovation and Diana was rediscovered. Richard Fiske, the director of the museum, thought about uncovering Diana and talked to Joshua Taylor, the director of the National Collection of Fine Arts, about doing so and having her preside over the hall as before.   Sadly for Diana, it was not to be, and she remains hidden from view.

Plans are in the works for the hall to undergo another renovation – this time to return it to its original Beaux-Arts architecture much like – the Behring Hall of Mammals and the Sant Ocean Hall. To paraphrase Rogers and Hammerstein’s song from The Sound of Music, “How do you solve a problem like Diana?” What will happen to Diana? Prior to the design of the new hall, Diana will be uncovered and examined by a conservator to see how she has withstood time, hidden from the world for so long. There is no doubt that she is an important part of the history of the institution…will she be relevant today? We’ll keep you posted!

Amy Ballard, Senior Historic Preservation Specialist: Architectural History and Historic Preservation, Smithsonian Office of Facilities, Engineering & Operations