The Living Museum: 1950-1996

Continuum

Many felt that museology should be moving away from the storing and displaying of artifacts to using them as a means for teaching science, history, art, and other subjects. People were not simply to be attracted by exhibits; they were to be instructed. This mission demanded someone- as had been said in the past-to bring the Smithsonian into modern times, someone who would again re-interpret the words of James Smithson and re-balance the administration of Smithson's legacy.

The man the Regents favored to be the ninth Secretary contrasted strongly with the eighth, and not just in training. Archaeologist Robert McCormick Adams, provost of the University of Chicago, had been born and raised in Chicago. An egalitarian, tall and physically imposing-he moved many tons of sandstone to build his summer house in Basalt, Colorado-Adams was an expert on patterns of settlement in ancient Mesopotamia, and a determined university man.

Adams distrusted Washington, although he recognized the Smithsonian's importance and its unique position as an institution of learning. In an interview held in a conference room of the Supreme Court with the Regents' Search Committee, he expressed concerns about appropriation battles on the Hill, lack of time to do his own research and writing, and the frustrations of running a large bureaucracy. He refused the Regents' initial offer.

Although distinct from the federal government, the Smithsonian was dependent upon federal appropriations, and the Secretary of the Smithsonian traditionally had been involved in helping obtain this money. As it turned out, Adams's original concerns, including those concerning administrative life in Washington, were well grounded. As a member of the Search Committee later commented, "No one anticipated how political things would get, or how tight the budgets."

But, out of some 300 people considered, Adams was the Search Committee's unanimous choice. Despite personal reservations about the political and economic pressures Washington brought to bear on an Institution dependent upon federal support, Adams agreed to reconsider the offer, and, in January 1984, finally accepted.

An intellectual of broad ranging interests, Adams was well acquainted with the real world. He had enrolled as a physics major at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1943, at age 17, but soon lost interest in this field. Enlisting in the Navy as an engineering officer candidate, he was transferred to boot camp as an apprentice seaman, and, at the end of World War II, having completed training as a radio technician, he was sent to Shanghai, where his duties included serving as a shore patrolman. In 1946 he enrolled in the University of Chicago, took courses in history and political science, and toyed with the idea of becoming a journalist. He dropped out in 1949 to work first on a Ford assembly line and then in a U.S. Steel mill.

In 1950 Adams re-enrolled in the University of Chicago, and joined an expedition to Iraqi Kurdistan that led to extensive studies of water courses and settlement patterns in Iraq, studies that were frequently interrupted by political developments in the Mideast. Still, Adams, his wife, Ruth Salzman Skinner, and their children spent a lot of time in the country around Baghdad.

In 1975 Adams completed a monumental work, Heartland of Cities: Surveys of Ancient Settlement and Land Use on the Central Floodylain of the Euphrates, which covered population dynamics over a period of 6,000 years. He was hampered in furthering the study by his limited access to the region. "Iraq is like a wonderful laboratory whose door is out of my control," he said.

The newly chosen Secretary had also done field work in Mexico, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, and had accompanied scientific missions to Europe, China, and the Soviet Union. At the University of Chicago, he had served as director of the Oriental Institute, dean of the Division of Social Sciences, and then as provost.

Adams spent his summers in the inter-mountain West, reading, writing poetry, and working with his hands. No stranger to Washington, he had for years been active in the National Academy of Sciences and its National Research Council. But his academic past had not fully prepared him for the unique problems of the Smithsonian that descended upon him from the moment he arrived in town.

Adams moved into the Secretary's office in the East Wing of Castle in the autumn of 1984, and took over responsibility for what he described as "a shining constellation of museums spanning the arts, natural sciences, and technology, with the responsibility to use these resources for the cultural enrichment and education of the nation "

In one of his first acts as Secretary, he gave the museum directors the freedom to follow their own initiatives. Adams saw this primarily as an attempt at decentralizing what he liked least, the bureaucracy. He would later characterize his style as "acephalous" (headless) leadership-decision-making by consensus. This was hailed as overdue reform by some within the Smithsonian, and criticized by others for diluting the Secretary's leadership role.

Adams further shook things up by changing the duties of some assistant secretaries, making one responsible for research instead of science, and the other for museums instead of history and art. Since all museums had research functions, this caused some confusion about administrative authority.

As the successor to Sam Hughes, the long-standing and effective Under Secretary, he chose Dean Anderson, a young man with comparatively little administrative experience. The Smithsonian was changing quickly from an almost regal Institution to one of more modest material ambitions that was facing demands for social equality and in need of ever larger appropriations to meet a rapidly expanding payroll.

The challenge was to keep the Smithsonian focused on its original mandate-the increase and diffusion of knowledge-at a time when traditional roles of all sorts were being re-examined in academia and when what was seen as the dominant culture was being called into question. These concerns would affect research and exhibits and cause contentious debate both within the Institution and without.

In Adams's first public statement as Secretary he expressed the view that Joseph Henry's intention "to enlarge the bounds of human thought by assisting men of science to make original investigations in all branches of knowledge" was no longer within the capability of museums or of the Smithsonian. That role, he said, had passed to universities and special institutes.

The value of the Smithsonian and other museums, he felt, lay in maintaining collections for systematic research, and in educating the public. He praised the breadth and depth of the Institution's collections, which seemed to put him more in the camp of former Secretary Spencer Baird than in that of Joseph Henry.

In 1986 the Smithsonian's new Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, an elegant, underground museum within the Quadrangle that was connected to the Freer by a tunnel, purchased the stunning collection of Henri Vever, a Parisian jeweler and art-nouveau-movement leader who had died in 1942. Included in the collection were 160 works of Persian and Indian art from the 11th to the 19th centuries--paintings, manuscripts, calligraphy, and book bindings. "The acquisition," Adams said during the official opening of the Quadrangle in 1987,"makes the Smithsonian Institution, with the Freer-Sackler combined, a major world center for the study and exhibition of Islamic manuscripts."

In addition to the art museums--the other being the National Museum of African Art--the Quadrangle housed the Directorate of International Activities, the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, and the National and Resident Associates Programs. The ribbon- cutting ceremonies lacked the pomp of past openings, but in its first year the graceful, imaginative, and expensive Quadrangle attracted 1.6 million visitors.

Meanwhile, the office for a wider audience, the outgrowth of an ad hoc committee formed in 1983 to broaden the Smithsonian's appeal to minorities, called for revamping exhibits that reflected outmoded or unpopular views of natural science. The Office of Equal Employment and Minority Affairs continued to work for broader representation in hiring, but the Regents criticized it for lack of progress in solving the problem of equal employment-a problem older than Adams's regime.

In the 1989 Smithsonian Year, Adams asked, "What does the Smithsonian stand for today?" In answering, he pointed out that it could not claim a "comprehensiveness of knowledge increased and communicated,"but could claim to be a "living institution, actively engaged on many fronts, and committed to public service and public dialogue." In other words, the Smithsonian was squarely in the world, not above it.

In addition to praising the Institution's collections and the independence of its staff, Adams expressed "an overarching concern for preserving and articulating our cultural and natural heritage." This was the Smithsonian's greatest responsibility, he said, as well as a clear indication of Adams's own priorities. He stressed the need to monitor, understand, and try to stop "deterioration of the global environment." His choice of botanist and conservationist Thomas E. Lovejoy as Assistant Secretary for External Affairs indicated that he took the Institution's environmental role seriously.

The Regents kept the pressure on Smithsonian management to broaden its ethnic appeal. Adams rearranged the areas of responsibility of some Assistant Secretaries, and in 1990 appointed as his new Under Secretary an African-American woman, Carmen Turner, who had formerly served as general manager of the Washington Metro Area Transit Authority. Yet various ethnic groups continued to seek representation.

Adams narrowed what he considered the Smithsonian's proper focus. In addition to maintaining the collections "while deepening the public's appreciation," he wrote, it was also "to advance research in those areas where the Institution has a special position of leadership and responsibility." These areas included the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, both of which operated on the fringes of the Smithsonian bureaucracy. He broke up the old Radiation Biology Laboratory, reassigning most of its scholarly staff.

Finally, Adams opined, the Smithsonian had "to respect and justify the national support on which we depend by effectively reaching out to increasingly diverse, geographically dispersed audiences." He felt that, with regard to the arrangement of its programs, the greatest need was for "a broadening and strengthening of the Institution's outreach to all the varied cultural and ethnic groups making up this nation." Clearly, cultural as well as biological diversity was important to Adams, and gradually the face of the Institution began to change.

Those accustomed to the urbane Ripley holding forth in the rarified climate he had created in the Castle and at Smithsonian functions found Adams aloof by comparison, even abrupt. His fundraising abilities and rapport with members of Congress also contrasted with Ripley's. Amassing money from contributors and stroking members of Congress was part of the job, but Adams was not particularly adept at either. Because congressmen were adversely affected by budget restraints, they were far less likely to go along with Smithsonian requests than they had in the past, and that was no fault of the Secretary's.

Many who worked with Adams considered him refreshingly straightforward and easily approachable in a professional capacity. The consummate professor, he ran meetings as he would a graduate seminar, and his speeches were often esoteric and profound. "He doesn't like crowds or tuxedos," said a colleague who often witnessed the Secretary pursuing his daily agenda at the Castle, "but he was accessible, and absolutely honest. You could engage with him."

The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), one of the bureaus of which Adams was proudest, had been the Canal Zone Biological Area until 1966. Far from Washington and the emphasis on diffusion of knowledge, STRI had continued to work for its increase.

A land bridge separating two continents and two oceans, Panama enjoys unprecedented biological diversity, including some 900 species of birds, and affords an increasing number of scientists from the Smithsonian and from other institutions both in the U.S. and abroad a unique opportunity to do research in an area that has remained relatively undisturbed for more than half a century. A small plot on Barro Colorado Island in Gatun Lake, for instance, contains some 300 species of trees and is a bonanza for tropical biologists.

As appropriations from Congress increased, STRI achieved broader recognition as a research center. It also played an important role in the growing appreciation of tropical forests and seas as crucial to the health of the planet. Knowledge attained at STRI has implications extending far beyond the isthmus.

In 1973 STRI's operations expanded to include a new mainland headquarters on the site of the old Tivoli Hotel in the Ancon section of Panama City. STRI's facilities continued to expand, taking in a network of marine and terrestrial field stations, various laboratories, and, with funds provided by the family of Tupperware fame, the Earl S. Tupper Research and Conference Center, an extensive tropical-sciences library. In 1985 the government of Panama bestowed upon STRI the recognition and benefits of an international mission that caters to hundreds of scientists from all over the world.

STRI scientists pursue studies on global warming, ocean circulation, tropical ecosystems, and species extinction, as well as on animal behavior, evolution, physiology, genetics, systematics, anthropology, archaeology, and paleontology. At such sites as the Punta Galeta Marine Laboratory, on the Atlantic Coast near the city of Colon, researchers collect data for STRI's marine environmental monitoring program. At the institute's largest marine facility, the Naos Island Laboratories, which are near the Pacific entrance of the Panama Canal and are connected to the mainland by a causeway, researchers investigate adjacent intertidal shores, cobble and sand beaches, and estuarine habitats. STRI scientists detected early effects of the 1983 "E1 Nino" meteorological disturbance by recording unusually high sea-surface temperatures and subsequent damage to coral reefs, fish, and sea-urchin populations; they gained further international recognition by demonstrating the potential dangers that would be posed by construction of a sea-level canal, which would allow passage of such noxious organisms as poisonous sea snakes from the colder Pacific to the Atlantic.

On Barro Colorado Island, STRI's main site for the study of lowland moist tropical forest, scientists like James Zetek and Thomas Barbour once lived in huts. Today researchers enjoy modern living quarters, a cafeteria, and air-conditioned lab facilities, and are engaged in projects ranging from fitting bats with radio-transmission devices to tagging some 240,000 plants in the 124-acre Tropical Forests Dynamics Plot.

At various sites throughout the isthmus, paleoecologists probe the region's three-million-year history to study the effects of climatic and sea-level fluctuations and to find evidence of human settlement over the last 11,000 years. In the ultraviolet light of STRI's molecular biology lab, scientists isolate genetic material into fluorescent flashes of DNA that may prove crucial to the perpetuation of Earth's biodiversity.

Ongoing research in the raising of tropical food sources explains the presence of large rodents called paces in cages at the Tupper center and of green iguanas on Barro Colorado, where game wardens patrol to prevent poaching. Drawn by STRI's international fellowship and by intern programs that train 50 young people a year, half of them from Latin America, students move continuously between these facilities.

Meanwhile, plans for the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) moved ahead. The idea of a hemispheric museum dedicated to Indians, the continent's first inhabitants, had been around for some time and enjoyed Adams's unqualified support: He considered it both intellectually appropriate and in keeping with the Smithsonian's mandate and history, the latter so wrapped up in westward expansion and the collection and preservation of Native American artifacts.

The Smithsonian had been negotiating for years with the custodians of the Museum of the American Indian in New York to secure the collections of George Gustav Heye, who had died in 1957. Heye had been a wealthy friend of David Rockefeller, the brother of Nelson Rockefeller, who, in 1976, as Vice President of the United States and a Smithsonian Regent, had pushed for transferring the collection to Washington to be housed in a new museum. The unprecedented number of artifacts-more than one million-that Heye had voraciously collected were stored at the time in unsatisfactory conditions in the Bronx, essentially unavailable to scholars. Interpretations of Heye's will by authorities in New York seemed to preclude the collection's leaving the city. The Smithsonian remained in "a watchful posture rather than an active one," in Adams's words, waiting for the courts to resolve the issue.

For two years, negotiations-and wrangling-over what would be the final resting place of the collection involved state officials, Indian spokespersons, and various members of Congress, among them Senators Patrick Moynihan, a New York Democrat and Smithsonian Regent who in the end supported the collection's transferal, and Daniel Inouye, a Democrat from Hawaii. Inouye wanted the museum in Washington, but advocated the return of all identifiable Indian remains to the tribes requesting them.

Finally, in 1989, legislation establishing the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) was passed by Congress and signed by President George Bush. The new museum was to be located on the last open space on the Mall, east of the Air and Space Museum. Congress agreed to meet the Smithsonian's obligations by appropriating federal funds for the restoration of the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in lower Manhattan, where some of the Heye artifacts would be exhibited; for construction of a storage facility at Suitland, Maryland; and ultimately for two-thirds of the cost of the museum on the Mall.

The controversy surrounding the return of ancestral Indian bones came to involve the Smithsonian's collections in the Museum of Natural History, and developed into one of the most significant public issues affecting the museum. Originating with those Indians who wanted the remains of relatives and tribal elders returned, the controversy eventually involved native groups worldwide, which now sought to prevent the exhumation and scientific examination of human remains. Some anthropologists at the Smithsonian felt that all artifacts should be retained as part of the Institution's irreplaceable, scientifically invaluable collections; others thought that religious considerations and moral responsibility required restitution of materials that had been collected over the years without regard for the beliefs, or the feelings, of indigenous peoples.

In 1990 legislation was passed requiring repatriation of identifiable remains, upon request, to descendants or tribal groups that can demonstrate entitlement tot the property in question. The NMAI policy provies an even broader mandate for the repatriation of sacred objects, and the Smithonian returned all identifiable human remains, including an extensice collection of bones in the Museum of Natural History that had been taken from burial sites in Alaska by the late Ales Hrdlicka.

To meet its financial responsibilities for the NMAI, the Smithsonian had to raise one third of the estimated $105 million cost for the design and construction of a museum on the Mall. In addition to this facility-which was scheduled to open in 2001-the George Gustav Heye Center, a cultural resource center located in the old Custom House in New York, opened in 1994.

There would also be built at the Institution's Museum Support Center, in Suitland, Maryland, a unique facility that merged collections with related research, display, and community services; this was scheduled to open in 1997. Such unprecedented custodial capacity was conceived to encourage the performance of Indian religious ceremonies and make artifacts and cultural objects available to the Indian community at large.

Extensive meetings were held with Indian groups around the country to determine how the facility's objectives might best be accomplished and how it could be opened up to diverse tribes and activities. In part as a reflection of Adams's desire for the dispersal of knowledge, a fourth, traveling museum had been envisioned to take artifacts and related activities into the field.

The Secretary selected W.Richard West, of the Cheyenne-Arapaho tribes of Oklahoma, as director of the NMAI. It was agreed that the Indian artifacts still housed in the Natural History Museum would remain there, along with the files and records of the old Bureau of American Ethnology. Related material in the Museum of American History would also remain separate.

West set about trying to raise $35 million for the new museum. A strong attraction for potential donors was the breadth and magnificence of the Heye collection, which represented all great American Indian civilizations. Its treasures ranged from feather work by remote forest tribes of the Amazon to carved masks by Arctic Inuit, fine stone carvings from the Northwest Coast, Kachina dance masks from the Southwest, gold work from Peru, and Olmec and Mayan jade, and included a vast array of tools, weapons, clothing, ornaments, and ceremonial objects.

Plans for an African-American museum also had begun. Initially, feeling that museums should not be dedicated to every ethnic group in America, Adams expressed doubts about its appropriateness. However, he eventually supported the concept, which the Regents endorsed in February of 1992, and it was proposed that the museum occupy part of the Arts and Industries Building, next to the Castle. In June 1993 the House of Representatives unanimously passed legislation authorizing the creation of a National African American Museum at the Smithsonian, but the legislation died in the senate the following year. Efforts to make this museum a reality continue under the auspices of the African American Museum Project.

During this time, controversies arose over the content of exhibits, and, more specifically, over labels in the National Museum of Natural History, many of which were branded as elitist or out- of-touch with current social realities. Among those offered as examples were John Smith's first encounter with the Indians along the James River and the African lion exhibit featuring animals shot by Theodore Roosevelt. Labels were altered to reflect changing attitudes about suitable content and interpretation, but their replacements were sometimes dismissed by those with a more traditional view as revisionist or "politically correct."

These so-called dilemma labels, which highlighted what were considered the inaccuracies or prejudices of the past, caused dissension both within the Smithsonian and without. Experts and commentators who saw the value of an exhibit's original components and interpretations clashed with those who wanted a more fashionable, up-to-date approach; this again raised questions of objective truth that first had been addressed at the Smithsonian by George Brown Goode more than a century before.

Other critics pointed to the Smithsonian's new practice of soliciting from institutional or corporate donors monetary contributions that were earmarked for particular programs, and then publicly attributing the program or exhibit to the donor. This, the critics felt, smacked of commercialism. Nevertheless, the Natural History Museum decided to name its popular insect zoo after the founder of a corporation that used vast amounts of insecticide in pest control. Also, in 1989, admission was charged for access to an exhibit of mechanical, "living" dinosaurs, the first time such a fee was ever required at the Smithsonian.

In another experiment, officials placed collection boxes in two museums, two galleries, and at the Zoo to encourage voluntary contributions from visitors. The Smithsonian had been financially strapped before, but nothing of this kind had ever been attempted. The experiment continues to be only a modest success.

Increasingly Adams found himself caught between camps, between proponents of an activist Smithsonian and those favoring the museum's traditional role and between champions of revisionist American history and detractors of this approach.

As a case in point, in 1991 a number of people took issue with the National Museum of American Art's exhibit "The West As America," which portrayed the opening of the West and employed some unusually didactic labels suggesting that the enduring view of Western expansion was overly rosy and ignored the morally dubious subjugation of Indians and the despoliation of the land. The exhibit brought harsh criticism from influential members of Congress, and more charges of political correctness by newspaper commentators. As a result, some labels were altered to present a less polemical view. But this affair was only a warm-up for what would soon erupt into perhaps the largest controversy ever over a Smithsonian exhibit.

Also in 1991, Congress authorized an annex to the Air and Space Museum. It was to be built at Dulles International Airport outside Washington for the exhibition of such acquisitions as the supersonic SR-71 spy plane, a 747 airliner, and a space shuttle. Adams enthusiastically supported this idea; he felt it important that some of the Smithsonian's functions be dispersed to other parts of the country in order that Americans elsewhere might gain access to Smithsonian treasures and that certain exhibits escape the proximity of official Washington.

In 1992, Adams warned that the Smithsonian's funds for exhibition, research, and services were being cut. He predicted layoffs among the 6,600 staffers. The Institution was receiving some 26 million visitors a year and an annual appropriation of more than $350 million-a substantial increase over the $203 million it was allotted at the time Adams took office. The endowment approached $400 million, but $229 million of that was needed just for maintenance on Smithsonian buildings.

As time went on, Adams could cite as an accomplishment an increase in minority staff. Sylvia Williams, head of the Museum of African Art, was the first African-American director on the Mall; Spencer Crew, officially appointed to replace Roger Kennedy as director of the Museum of American History in January 1994, was the second. Constance Berry Newman, also African American and formerly director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, replaced the late Carmen Turner as Under Secretary.

Smithsonian divisions continued in their pursuit of knowledge, often with spectacular results. In addition to STRI's accomplishments and the bold initiatives at the National Zoological Park, including the re-introduction of the golden lion tamarin to Brazil, the Astrophysical Observatory discovered the brightest exploding star seen in 400 years, and the Office of Fellowships and Grants made hundreds of grants every year.

As further signs of progress, new East Wing facilities were constructed at the Museum of Natural History, and the Great Hall of the Castle was at last transformed into an effective visitor information center. The Smithsonian organizational chart grew to include, among other bureaus, the Biological Diversity Program, an Office of Human Resources, an Office of Environmental Management and Safety, and the National Sciences Resources Center.

Impressed with the ability of children to learn from exhibits, particularly in the Museum of Natural History, Adams was convinced that an educational role was one of the most important and enduring the Smithsonian could foster.

But he had tired of the endless struggles, and of what he now referred to as Washington's "poisonous" atmosphere. In 1993, after nine years as Secretary, Adams decided to step down on the 10th anniversary of his installation. The Smithsonian, he maintained, continued to embody "some of our nation's most important aspirations and values"; serving as its Secretary, he added, had provided him with-appropriately-"an education."

On receiving Adams's resignation, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, Chancellor of the Smithsonian, praised the Secretary for his work in "sustaining the excellence of the Smithsonian's scholarly research, on enhancing the quality of its exhibitions and on expanding its educational programs."

Again, a Search Committee was appointed to find a successor to Adams. Never before-not even in the time of Joseph Henry-had assertive, inspired leadership been more in demand. The committee was headed by Ira Michael Heyman, a lawyer and a scholar and former chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley. He and his colleagues began the evaluation of some 300 prospective Secretaries, an arduous task that would have an unexpected, and unprecedented, outcome.

Meanwhile, a controversy arose over a planned exhibit of the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945. The written material accompanying the exhibit tended to portray the Japanese as victims and to characterize the American objective as the destruction of Japanese culture rather than the winning of the war and the avoidance of the enormous human casualties that would have resulted from an invasion.

Martin Harwit, then director of the National Air and Space Museum, had to defend his exhibit against irate critics in the United States Air Force and other military veterans groups, in various patriotic organizations, and in much of the national press. The controversy represented the culmination of the trend that had become prevalent during Adams's tenure to re-examine history from the perspective of the sufferer, a trend that reflected the forces at play in academia that cast into doubt previous views of American culture.

The Enola Gay exhibit brought a new, more damaging notoriety to the Smithsonian. In the past, whatever its difficulties and perceived shortcomings, the Institution had always been seen as the quintessentially American repository of sacrosanct national icons, champion of national accomplishment and national ideals. Now, for the first time, Americans began to question these assumptions, as well as the Smithsonian's motives and direction.

Military veterans demanded, and received, access to revised exhibit descriptions and labels about the Enola Gay, an unprecedented development that threatened the independence of all curators. The Institution consequently found itself under attack from all sides, and riven from within by the continuing discontent of traditionalists and the demands of those with broader social objectives. Once again the Smithsonian reflected powerful forces stressing and shading the American fabric.

Only weeks before the search committee made its selection of Adams's successor, Michael Heyman removed himself from its ranks so that he, too, might be considered for the position of Secretary, but not before insisting that the merits of the other finalists be carefully weighed and an impartial decision reached.

Serving as chancellor in California during the contentious '80s, Heyman had established a reputation of firmness but fairness, and had protected the ideal of impartial higher education while dramatically increasing the university's endowment. Tall and amiable, his habitual bow tie and suspenders suggesting a sense of style and tradition as well as a certain jauntiness in the face of difficulty, Heyman soon ascended to the top of the Regents' list.

Then, after final deliberations, the Search Committee chose Heyman, the only non-scientist in the Smithsonian's 148-year history to serve as secretary. In making the announcement in May 1994, Regent Barber Conable described Heyman as "a generalist whose range of skills meshes with the Smithsonian's interests. As chancellor of Berkeley, he saved the biosciences departments and sustained the university's strong reputation in physics. But in addition, he is accomplished in fundraising."

On a brilliantly clear September day in 1994, Smithsonian employees spilled out of the museums and gathered on the Mall with the many visitors and dignitaries. On a dias set up in front of the Castle and the statue of Joseph Henry sat the Heymans, the Adamses, and Chief Justice William Rehnquist. The U.S. Navy Ceremonial Band played the national anthem, and the colors were presented by the Joint Armed Forces Color Guard. Rehnquist spoke of "the infrequent succession of great scholarly leaders, rooted in the rhythms of academe more than politics." During the Smithsonian's long history, he said, there had been no fewer than 12 Chief Justices, 30 presidents, and 33 Speakers of the House of Representatives. He then presented Heyman with the Smithsonian symbol of succession, a five-inch brass key to the Castle.

Standing under the bronze eyes of the first Secretary, the 10th Secretary spoke of the awe engendered by the surroundings, and of the sight of the Capitol to the east. "Every Secretarial era," he said,"reflects unique circumstances and poses its own opportunities and problems." Heyman wished to increase the awareness of the Smithsonian in the minds of all Americans by increasing its resources, maintaining a strong relationship with congress, and greatly enhancing fundraising efforts. Heyman wanted to provide greater access to the Smithsonian's treasures through electric links to exhibits, collections, and research, and he soon announced the appointment of Thomas Lovejoy, formerly Assistant Secretary for External Affairs, as a special counselor to the Secretary on environmental matters, a reflection of Heyman's and the Smithsonian's long-standing concerns.

Heyman then addressed the Enola Gay controversy. The earlier perspective of the bombing of Japan had lacked balance, he said, suggesting that this element of balance would be restored not just to the controversial exhibit at the Air and Space Museum, but to all Smithsonian endeavors.

And, of course, he had other ideas about how the Institution should be run and about what its priorities should be (they should, he felt, include reducing the Institution's size without damaging its effectiveness and returning control of many functions to the bureaus). He wanted to assess the research then under way at the Smithsonian to assure that it compared favorably with research being done elsewhere; he wanted to encourage diversity and the fulfillment of projects that dealt with the history and culture of America's ethnic groups, although not necessarily to the extent of building new edifices or creating new museums to accommodate such projects.

Ultimately, the new secretary sought to maintain the Institution as an incandescent reflection of the Smithsonian bequest that was of special relevance to Americans. "I want people all over the United States to cherish the Smithsonian," Heyman said, "not simply because they came to Washington and visited it once, but because it plays some role in their lives."

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