Trouble at the Smithsonian

By Milo Cleveland Beach

There has been enormous press attention recently to the alarming situation at the Smithsonian Institution, the complex consisting of sixteen museums, a zoological park, and several research operations centred in Washington, DC. It receives about seventy per cent of its funding from the American taxpayer.

Controversy has arisen over the appointment of Lawrence Small to head the organization. Unlike his predecessors, Small, a one-time executive with Citicorp and the Fannie Mae Mortgage Company, was not chosen for his academic credentials. The appointment might have been brilliant, for the Smithsonian operates with outmoded financial and personnel procedures, its staff is inefficiently large, and it needs to renovate buildings and exhibitions that have deteriorated. Those are problems for which Small's expertise could be welcome.

He has made no secret of his own priorities. `I am a devout believer in quantitative measurement,' he has said. `In the end, if you can't figure out a way to hang a number on whatever it is you're trying to track, you will see that it is impossible to assess your degree of progress.' Moreover, anything not measurable with numbers is evidently not worth his attention. Fundraising and increased attendance are therefore his prime marks of success.

No serious museum director could argue with the importance of either activity. Small, however, seems unaware that (for museums) bringing in money and new audiences are not goals in themselves, as they legitimately are for a business. Instead, they are simply infrastructural needs that allow museums to fulfil their quite different missions. These regularly include the maintenance and development of collections, research, and active engagement with the public.

A recent article which I wrote for the Washington Post (27 January 2002) decried a directive from Small that Smithsonian museum directors put aside their scholarly and programmatic interests to concentrate solely on his mandated goals. In this day and age, few museum directors have the time to be active scholars, and as museum directors they have made administration their primary commitment. But to decree that scholarly interests should play no role in a director's day-to-day existence misunderstands museums.

This is made even more serious by his dismissal of curatorial expertise. With regard to a major exhibition, `The American Presidency', which Small wanted organized virtually overnight to coincide with the inauguration of President Bush, he told curators that they did not need to research the topic, as they could get what they needed from encyclopaedias. (The exhibition was to cost US$12 million.) He then went on to accept a US$38 million gift dependent on the Smithsonian's willingness to mount an exhibition enshrining various of the donor's favourite celebrities. Small's action was taken over the strong objections of many Smithsonian curators and led Roger Kennedy, former director of the National Museum of American History and subsequently head of the National Park Service, to remark in a radio interview for NPR's Marketplace: `They [Smithsonian scholars] know that history is a very complicated process...there are a multitude of causes for significant events...Lots of people go to the Smithsonian now to learn about history, which is, after all, the pursuit of truth, not the pursuit of celebrity, not the pursuit of the latest person to have their picture on the front of People magazine.'

And a group of curators asked a key question: will the Smithsonian Institution actually allow private funders to rent space in a public museum for the expression of private interests and personal views?

The donation and the project were eventually withdrawn, but concern remains about the substitution of money - a quantifiable substance - for the less measurable qualities of intelligence and intellectual substance as the decisive factor at the Smithsonian today.

And who, in fact, should be in charge of the Smithsonian's programmes, and its museums and research offices? Under previous administrations, the Smithsonian recognized that each museum had different organizational needs according to what was most productive for its particular discipline, and a museum director was accountable for the effectiveness of both the administrative organization and the resulting programmes. Spencer Crew, Roger Kennedy's successor, stated that Small treats his museum directors like branch managers: `That's not the way we see ourselves, and it's an adjustment all of us are struggling with.' Crew subsequently resigned. Another director was quoted as saying that Small had reduced them to `trivial nonentities'.

Editorials and letters from the general public published in newspapers across the country are evidence that this is no mere intramural spat. The Washington Post has been especially lively. On 3 February, for example, Margaret Hindle Hazen wrote:

Small uses his Smithsonian position to command museum directors to reject lifelong commitments and become fundraisers for Small's personal vision of the Institution's mission...If the Smithsonian devalues serious scholarship, which occurs behind the scenes, there will ultimately be little of value to see `above the surface'.

A week later, Joshua P. Smith commented:

Small sees the Secretary's role as that of a chief executive, with museum directors there merely to carry out his directions. My experience convinces me that the museum environment does not fit the corporate mold but is rather like a university, where the president presides over a community of scholars...The departure of Smithsonian museum directors in opposition to this restrictive management style has reached record proportions. Likewise...there has been mass disaffection expressed by the Smithsonian curators.

The opposite extreme, a viewpoint that could prompt a David Lodge novel, was defined by Douglas Manning:

The [arrogant, intellectual] elite will tell us what we need to know and how we should interpret or reinterpret history...[they] will decide the subjects worthy of scholarly thought and will send us the bill for their efforts. (Washington Post, 3 February 2002).

Hopefully Manning saw the response to his letter by Elizabeth Tobey, a graduate student at the University of Maryland:

I had the great opportunity to work for two summers as an intern at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery. While working there, I met so many dedicated and enthusiastic scholars and curators who were very, very different from the pompous characterizations in Mr. Manning's letter. Not only were they committed to their research, but they were always finding new ways to share the fruits of their research with the public, in the form of gallery talks, and working with the Education Department on educational materials. Many worked overtime on weekends without being paid extra, to get research done for upcoming exhibitions. (Washington Post, 10 February 2002)