The Living Museum: 1950-1996

A Wind in the Attic

Born in 1913 in Manhattan and raised there and on the family property in Connecticut, Ripley's upbringing included foreign sojourns to Paris, where, at age 10, he wandered the Louvre, looking at the paintings by Rubens and Tintoretto and at models of ships in the fleet of Louis XIV He played in the Tuileries Garden, intrigued by the puppet show and the carousel, amusement themes that would resurface in later life, in another place.

At the age of 13, Ripley took a walking tour of Tibet. He attended St. Paul's preparatory school, in New Hampshire, and then went on to Yale University, where some of his ancestors also had gone. The headmaster of St. Paul's told Ripley: "I think you ought to go to Yale because there you'll surely Icarn how to slap people on the back." But Ripley was more interested in birds. A classmate at St. Paul's had first brought Ripley into the sphere of amateur ornithology, an interest augmented by Ripley's keen natural vision and the time he spent in rural New England.

In 1936 he joined a collecting voyage aboard a 59-foot schooner in the South Pacific, which he later characterized as "a 19th century voyage of exploration in the 20th century. Very romantic to...go down the wind slot in the Solomons in full moon, seeing the great, mysterious, brooding mountains." He had to explain at length where the Solomon Islands were, although, with the coming of World War II, this would soon be common knowledge in America. The trip reinforced his avian passion; he enrolled in a two-year program in zoology at Harvard University, and received his Ph.D.

In 1942 he traveled south from Cambridge to Washington, D.C., to work as an assistant curator of birds at the Smithsonian. His specialty was the birds of the islands off Sumatra, an area that had been visited by William Abbott half a century before. His work was routine-identification and storage. The antique quality of the Institution, including some older employees who actually lived in the Museum of Natural History, must have made a not altogether positive impression on the young ornithologist. (Jessie Beach, who worked in the paleontology division, was often seen wandering the halls at night in a dressing gown.) In any case, Ripley told Herbert Friedmann, "I don't think I'm cut out to be a civil servant."

World War II took Ripley away from Washington. Joining the ranks of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency, under General William "Wild Bill" Donovan, he trained briefly in espionage near the capital, and then was sent to Southeast Asia. There he used his contacts, and to some degree his scientific knowledge, in the interest of the OSS.

In New Delhi, the tall, stooped, bookish extrovert worked to coordinate the intelligence efforts of the United States and Great Britain; in Ceylon-known today as Sri Lanka-Ripley trained and equipped agents heading for Siam (Thailand), Malaya, Java, Sumatra, and other areas of Japanese domination. He also fell under the sway of Ceylonese bird life, collected hundreds of specimens, which he sent back to the Smithsonian, and named a newly discovered species after General Donovan.

While in Ceylon, Ripley's passion for collecting may have caused him some momentary embarrassment. One evening, while shaving, he spied a rare green woodpecker, Picus chlorolophus wells), that he wanted for his collection. Clad only in a towel, he rushed outside to shoot it, forgetting that Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Allied Commander in Southeast Asia, was hosting a cocktail party just a hundred yards away. The blast from the gun caused Ripley's towel to fall off. Lord Mountbatten was less than pleased with Ripley's unconventional behavior and lack of attire, but Ripley was unfazed.

After the war Ripley returned to the United States, and was appointed both assistant professor of zoology at Yale and associate curator of zoology at the university's Peabody Museum of Natural History. Having secured the time and the means to pursue his passion, he wrote about birds and published widely. His first book, Trail of the Money Bird, published in 1942, was a naturalistic work with a politically prescient title.

In 1949, he married Mary Livingston, who, while nurturing her own interests in photography, insects, and horticulture, shared his love of adventure. He later boasted of teaching her to skin birds and to preserve them. At their private aviary, "Paddling Ponds," on the Ripley country property in Litchfield, Connecticut, they collected and bred rare species. Their joint ornithological expeditions to India and Nepal were often arduous, but were taken in stride by the independent Mary.

In 1959 Ripley became director of the Peabody. Soon thereafter, he set up an organization, the Peabody Associatcs, to raise money for the museum, and put into practice both a flamboyant style and a kind of practicality that would serve him well in times to come.

In 1964, when the Smithsonian's Regents chose Ripley to succeed Leonard Carmichael, they chose a scientist whose eclectic interests and considerable knowledge encompassed such diverse subjects as Oriental porcelains, early American silver, and railroad locomotives. More sophisticated than any of his predecessors, his declared allegiance, at least, was to research, which, he later told an interviewer, "is as much a goal for the Smithsonian today as it was in Henry's time." Yet the scope and audacity of his plans for the Smithsonian's "increase diffusion of knowledge" would have amazed even that ever-collecting builder of the old National Museum, Spencer Baird.

Within a week of Ripley's arrival at the Castle that February, things began to change. According to William Warner, who became head of the Office of International Activities that Ripley created, the Secretary "laid out so many bold initiatives...that all of us with previous government experience were plunged into what can only be called a deep state of shock."

On only his second day on the job, Warner was sent to Congress to attend a hearing. The item to be discussed that interested Ripley was the proposed relocation of the giant monuments of King Rameses II and Queen Nefertiti at Abu Simbel, on the Nile River. "I thought to myself," Warner later recalled, "It's very nice that the Secretary takes an interest in such things. But how marginal, really."

The eventual outcome of Ripley's interest, however, and of his political elan-he had sent Warner on to the Senate to help save Abu Simbel-was a Congressional appropriation of funds and an agreement whereby the Smithsonian oversaw the archaeological grants associated with this colossal undertaking. Out of that victory would grow the Foreign Currency Program, which, during Ripley's tenure, enabled the Institution to grant $53 million to more than 200 American universities for work on some 800 overseas projects and thus increase the general store of knowledge.

The month before Ripley was sworn in, the new Museum of History and Technology (today's National Museum of American History) opened on Constitution Avenue. It may have owed its existence to former Secretary Carmichael, but its scope served as a symbol of Ripley's determination to expand both the Smithsonian's facilities and its staff. Only a dozen or so of the 50 exhibition halls set up on three of the museum's five floors were ready for the public, but the impressive if utilitarian building included such crowd-pleasing attractions as a basement cafeteria next to a sunken garden and Southern Railway's resplendent green-and-gold 1401 locomotive, one of the most popular exhibits from the start.

Beginning with Colonial times, the museum would feature as many examples of American cultural and technological developments as possible, with exhibits including the first Secret Service mug book, the first American postal issue, and the first machine-made pocket watch. Within three years, the museum had received an average of 15,000 visitors a day, more than any other Smithsonian bureau.

In addition to Ripley’s underlying professional interest in ornithology and history, he was also deeply interested in art. When he saw an early opportunity to make his mark in this field, he acted: In June 1964, he wrote to Joseph H. Hirshhorn, who had made millions in uranium mining, and expressed an interest in Hirshhorn's unprecedented collection of modern art.

Among the approximately 4,000 paintings and 1,600 pieces of sculpture belonging to Hirshhorn were works by Henry Moore, Willem de Kooning, Alberto Giacometti, Edgar Degas, Henri Matisse, Honore Daumier, Auguste Rodin, Pablo Picasso, Thomas Eakins, Ben Shahn, Stuart Davis, Andrew Wyeth, Jackson Pollock, and hundreds of other artists. Understandably, the governments of Britain, Canada, and Israel, as well as museum groups in Zurich, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and New York, all were interested in acquiring Hirshhorn's collection. But none of them could match Ripley's energy and persuasiveness once he had set his sights on these treasures.

The Secretary was not deterred by the fact that the diminutive, energetic Hirshhorn had no connection to the Washington art establishment. He told Hirshhorn that the Smithsonian had a "lively interest" in establishing an American art museum like the Tate Gallery, in London: "The National Gallery of Art, with its emphasis on the arts of Europe and the past, leaves the capital and the nation with no proper equivalent.... We would be most happy to explore this concept with you."

In the fall of 1964, Ripley visited Hirshhorn in Greenwich, Connecticut, to discuss with him the Smithsonian and its purpose. Although their backgrounds could not have been more dissimilar, they got on; Ripley later described Hirshhorn as "a wonderful man, in love with his collection.

Ripley also arranged for Mr. and Mrs. Hirshhorn to be invited to a White House luncheon that he was to attend with Roger L. Stevens, chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts-a titular arm of the Smithsonian-and Abe Fortas, a Washington lawyer who would soon become an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. President Lyndon B. Johnson made a brief appearance, and Mrs. Johnson told Hirshhorn that she was interested in the prospect of a museum in Washington to house his collection.

In August 1965, the first lady and her older daughter, Lynda Bird, went to Greenwich to see Hirshhorn's art. Shortly thereafter, Hirshhorn suffered a heart attack. While he was recovering, he received a letter of condolence from President Johnson, prompted by "our friend Dillon Ripley." The President wrote that he had "a very considerable interest" in the prospect of a new museum, and hoped to "have the opportunity to see both you and your collection."

The course was now set for a new, thoroughly modern Smithsonian art bureau that would offer numerous contrasts with the staid National Gallery across the Mall. (In terms of appearance, the Hirshhorn's unusual, daring construction would inspire some to refer to it as "the doughnut.")

In 1965 the bicentennial anniversary of James Smithson's birth provided Ripley with his first opportunity to publicly display his vision of the Smithsonian's future. The idea for a celebration had arisen during Carmichael's administration, but it was Ripley who imbued it with excitement and institutional pride.

Staffing a bicentennial office next to his, he set up committees to deal with the many necessities, including the design of a Smithsonian mace and emblem, the construction of pavilions on the Mall, and the composition of music for this unprecedented event. To help accommodate the crowds that would be attending what Ripley envisioned as a public spectacle, arrangements were made with the National Park Service for water, lavatories, trash collection, and cleanup.

Advice was gleaned from the National Academy of Sciences, which had recently celebrated its centennial, and from Brown University, which had recently celebrated its bicentennial year. Some 800 room reservations were made at the Shoreham Hotel alone, and a block of rooms was reserved at the Willard Hotel. A dozen world- renowned scholars were asked to discourse on the state of knowledge in their respective fields. Eleven of them, including Arthur Koestler, George Evelyn Hutchinson, Sir Kenneth Clark, Lewis Mumford, Robert Oppenheimer, Claude Levi-Strauss, and Fred L. Whipple, accepted. Invitations addressed by 20 secretaries went out to 3,500 special guests.

A grandstand was set up in front of the Natural History Museum, and the statue of Joseph Henry was turned so that it no longer faced the Castle but gazed out over a breadth of activities the first Secretary could not have imagined and probably would have deplored.

At 4 pm, on September 16, a trumpet fanfare sounded from the rampart above the entryway of the Castle. A herald read aloud a Presidential proclamation commemorating the events, and a grand procession of dignitaries in bright academic robes-Ripley's had been specially designed-then crossed from the Castle toward the Museum of Natural History to strains of a Sousa march, under clear skies that former Secretary Abbot, using sunspot calculations, had predicted.

Included were the Institution's chancellor, the Regents, former Regents and Secretaries, university presidents, museum directors, foundation representatives, trustees of various art galleries, U.S. government dignitaries, and foreign ambassadors and other representatives from 90 countries.

The mace at the head of the procession had been designed with the advice of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths in London, and enhanced with jewels from the Smithsonian's reserve stocks. The Institution's flag was emblazoned with a red demi-lion holding in its paws the sun "in splendor"-the crest of Smithson's father, Sir Hugh.

In addition, each Smithsonian bureau was rep- resented by a blue flag bearing the sun symbol. The Marine Corps Band played the commissioned musical pieces (wincing at the atonal modern compositions). After remarks and speeches, a gala dinner was held at the Museum of History and Technology, followed by a reception at the White House.

The celebration, wrote Paul Oehser in his book The Smithsonian Institution, "lent a certain carnival air to the Mall that has never gone away. Band concerts, chamber music from the Smithsonian tower, carousels, kite-flying, balloon flights, barbershop quartet singing, and other divertissements, all in the open air, became the order of the day."

The effect of the bicentennial of James Smithson's birth, with its pomp and broad representation, was to reaffirm the Smithsonian as an essential part of the Washington establishment and a vital depository of national treasure, intellectual and otherwise. Still thought of as "the nation's attic," a notion that went back to the 1880s, the Smithsonian was in fact becoming a more open and popular Institution, with its various bureaus serving as part of the entirety rather than as independent agencies.

The bicentennial also boosted S. Dillon Ripley quickly and unequivocally into the limelight, where he was seen as a serious player in the politics of culture. According to David Challinor, a biologist who had worked with Ripley in New Haven and who took over the Smithsonian's Office of International Activities before being named Assistant Secretary for Science in 1971, Ripley's style of operating "was to delegate authority, and set policy....He would have an idea, and say, 'See if it will work.' "

Ripley was not particularly collegial. He called meetings, told people what he wanted, and let them work out the details. If the project was of particular interest to him, attention was lavished on it. If a dinner he considered important was being planned, Ripley would ask the caterer to serve it to him and his advisers first, so it could be judged. Featured in these assessments were fine wines, a standard at the Ripley Smithsonian.

His inner circle of advisers included the Institution's general counsel, Peter Powers; Assistant Secretary James Bradley, who was credited by his associates as "the man who knew where the money was"; and the director of the Office of Education and Training, Charles Blitzer. Blitzer was hired to bring graduate students into the Smithsonian, and later became Assistant Secretary for History and Art.

Philip Ritterbush, an assistant to the Secretary who in 1968 was appointed director of academic programs, was the closest adviser to the Secretary. "I liked him to shock me into new ideas," Ripley later recalled about Ritterbush. "I wanted to revive the tradition of Baird, the ideal collector, who acted, as Ritterbush did to me, to spur Henry on."

With the help of these men, Ripley intended to broaden the Smithsonian's appeal while also enhancing its resources. Although Secretary Carmichael before him had softened Congress up, the Hill was still not particularly responsive to the Smithsonian's requests. And the first time Ripley appeared before the Bureau of the Budget, he later confided, "I felt I was up against a totally blank wall. I thought: 'What am I doing in Washington?' "

Yet in 1966, at a budget session on the Hill, members of Congress kept Ripley for more than two hours, asking broad-ranging questions. The Secretary conducted himself well, emphasizing the Smithsonian's research role, and received a budgetary increase from Congress of almost $4 million for fiscal year 1967.

Ripley didn't want the Smithsonian bureaus to resemble the type of museum he had known as a child. As he described his early museum-going experiences, one closed oneself "away from the world and became very solemn-serious about it. You saw everywhere exhibits which were documented as precisely as the relics of the 'True Cross,' which, as everybody knows, were not real.... [I]t was essentially very dull. You did it on Sunday after- noon after a big lunch."

Ripley believed that he first had to get the attention of the public, and that he then had to develop a constituency large enough to command Congressional interest and support. One way to accomplish at least the first goal, he decided, was to stage camel races on the Mall, an idea he got while visiting Fez, Morocco. He put David Challinor in charge of finding the camels; when he learned that this plan was impractical, he urged that buses, to be pulled by camels, be provided instead, to transport tourists from museum to museum. This plan didn't materialize either.

Another idea, which he pursued more forcefully, was that of installing a carousel on the Mall. This again harkened back to Ripley's childhood days-those spent in the Tuileries in Paris-and would become a symbol of the Ripley era at the Smithsonian. He later described his vision: "I wanted to have Dutch music wagons and monkeys and hurdy-gurdies, and make the place a living experience.... " Inside the museums, "We should take the objects out of the cases and make them sing...."

This vision led to the concept of a celebration of American folklife. As Ripley told the Regents in early 1967, "Although it has the world's largest collections of American folk artifacts, the Smithsonian, like all museums in our nation, fails to present folk culture fully and accurately."

Some members of Congress objected to what they saw as the potential violation of sacred ground. The Mall harbored the memories of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln-whose memorials were not far from the Castle, where Ripley wanted his carousel. Other politicians considered the Mall their private lawn, not a "midway". Despite the criticism, the carousel arrived in April 1967, a fanciful but potent statement about the Ripley Smithsonian. The Secretary himself was seen riding the merry-go-round, his long legs wrapped around his wooden mount. That same spring, the first Festival of American Folklife took place, featuring such expressions of American folk art as fife-and-drum groups, gospel singers, Puerto Rican and Cajun music, King Island Eskimo dancers, and the crafts of basket makers, potters, and silversmiths.

Seeking to play to the senses throughout the Institution, Ripley suggested adding the aroma of chocolate to an exhibit of a 19th-century confectionery at the Museum of History and Technology and a recording of a trumpeting elephant in the rotunda at Natural History. (This latter innovation caused such a distraction that after a few weeks it was discontinued.)

The Secretary took responsibility for the actions of his assistants, and personally involved himself in promotional events. Many of the Regents were uncomfortable with all this activity, including Ripley's courtship of Joseph Hirshhorn. The Secretary, on the other hand, wanted to break what a colleague called the "WASP" glass ceiling-the transparent but seemingly impermeable barrier to anyone who was not white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant and aspired to positions of influence at the Smithsonian. "He had to be a WASP to do it," said Challinor. "He handled the board with kid gloves."

His combination of diplomacy and determination led to the appointment of Murray Gell-Mann, a Nobel laureate, as the first Jewish person to serve on the Board of Regents. "Ripley was able to do something about elitism because he was socially and economically impeccable."

In the mid-1960s, Ripley undertook a unique, controversial project a distance from the Mall in a poor Washington, D.C., neighborhood across the Anacostia River. He felt that, located as it was in a city whose population at the time was approximately 70 percent black, the Smithsonian should offer more that would be of interest to this community, as well as to minority visitors from other countries.

In his pursuit of a broader constituency for the Institution, Ripley realized that it was imperative to bring in people who might not otherwise be attracted to it and who were conspicuously absent from its museums and galleries. Consulting with advisers, he decided to create a special museum for Washington's black community in one of the most historic and stable black neighborhoods in Washington.

In 1966, Julian T. Euell, a community worker and jazz musician, served as a consultant on the idea of an Anacostia museum. In 1969 he was brought in as deputy and later Assistant Secretary for Public Service, and helped develop the Anacostia Neighborhood Museum, the first of its kind in the nation. Euell was the first African American to hold such a high-level position at the Smithsonian. On the day the museum opened- September 15, 1967-in a converted theater on what was to be named Martin Luther King Avenue, Ripley arrived for the ceremonies with such dignitaries as the city's Mayor-designate, Walter Washington.

Directed by prominent local minister John Kinard, the new museum featured six exhibits designed for visitor interaction: a reproduction of an 1890 neighborhood store, a full-scale mockup of the Mercury space capsule, that could be disassembled, and a small theater for the viewing of closed-circuit television.

During its first year, the Anacostia museum attracted 80,000 visitors from all over the city. In 1968, during a march in Washington to protest the Vietnam war, Ripley insisted that all the museums stay open, and that protestors be allowed to use the facilities. This shocked and dismayed many oldliners within the Institution, who predicted disaster for the collections. But no damage occurred, and Ripley's belief that the museums belonged to the people was once again vindicated.

Throughout these diversions, Ripley maintained the Smithsonian's momentum in the art field. In 1968 the National Portrait Gallery and the National Collection of Fine Arts opened in the refurbished Patent Office Building. In 1972 the Renwick Gallery became Ripley's first major acquisition for the Institution. Designed by James Renwick in 1859 as the original Corcoran Gallery, it had come into the Smithsonian's possession after the Secretary, over lunch at the White House, persuaded President Johnson to tour the building with him. They had walked across Pennsylvania Avenue to the corner of 17th Street to inspect the beautiful, historic structure-which would later take as its focus American design-and the President, impressed with the Secretary's presentation, had declared it "Sold!"

Ripley knew that the best way to perform meaningful research in all fields was to provide funding that was not totally dependent upon the government. He set up additional trust funds for the Smithsonian, and hired professionals to manage them. He also courted donors. A trust fund offered by J. Seward Johnson led to the establishment in 1969 of the Smithsonian Marine Station at Link Port, a bureau for oceanographic research in Fort Pierce, Florida. Meanwhile, the government funded the Museum Support Center, in Suitland, Maryland, for the storage and maintenance of the Smithsonian's vast natural-history and technology collections.

The Secretary had helped raise private funds for the Renwick, but he also recognized the importance of the Institution's making money. He hired a business manager to expand the museum shops; the shop at the Museum of Natural History soon proved so popular that it had to be expanded to accommodate the crowds. A mail-order catalog was introduced, and additional cafeterias--providing food once available from local shops and vendors--opened. But Ripley needed a steadier, greater source of income for realization of his grand design.

IN 1965 the old Annual Report was replaced by the more accessible Smithsonian Year, which offered less detailed information about the Institution's growing bureaus and more about current events and future projects. Advance planning for the Smithsonian magazine, the real revolution in publishing at the Institution, would start in late 1968.

Ripley needed a specific vehicle for his expansion. Just as he had sought to open up the Board of Regents, and broaden the Smithsonian's appeal through the Resident and National Associates programs--part of a drive, started in 1965 and 1970 respectively, to raise money for the Institution and to increase its visibility--he now fought for the creation of a bright, lively magazine that would entertain as well as inform. Some Regents did not like the idea of a magazine, but among them were prominent business leaders who made the Secretary justifiy his proposals and then backed him up.

In 1968 Ripley hired a former managing editor of Life magazine, Edward K. Thompson, who brought in six other editors to develop the project. They were given various, sometimes inconvenient, offices in the Arts and Industries Building, easily accessible to Ripley, whose office in the east wing of the Castle gave him a view of noth the museum and the Capitol in the distance. Edwards Park, one of the original board of editors, recalled Ripley dropping by to determine what articles were being planned and generally to urge the project along. "Because he was tall he was constantly bumping his head on the exposed steam pipes. He would say brightly of our cramped quarters, 'This will bring out the best in you.'"

During the 18 months it took to plan and execute the magazine, the editorial staff determined that Smithsonian would present "soft" science, history, and art through photographs and good reporting and writing. And it would exercise some independence from the rest of the Institution. One of the editors, the late Ralph Backlund, characterized the magazine's field of inquiry as "everything the Smithsonian is interested in, will be interested in, or ought to be interested in"--or, in general, the world, with emphasis on the specific theme of "man and his environment." The magazine would be offered to members of the Smithsonian Associates.

Many at the Smithsonian remained skeptical about the magazine. Some felt it offered the unnecessary popularization, even trivilization, of the Institution's work and mandate. The new editors were shunned for many years by professional staffers, particularly those at Natural History, who considered them mere "publicists."

If the magazine did not success, Ripley's advisors agreed, the Regents would fire him.

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