SECRETARY'S REPORT 6 



the North American Mammals Hall, the Latin American Archeology 

 Hall, the Bird Hall, the American Cultural History Hall, the 

 Power Machinery Hall, the Second American Indian Hall, the Hall 

 of Health, the Military History Hall, the Printing Arts Plall, the Gems 

 and Minerals Halls, the Textile Hall, the Jade Koom, the World 

 of Mammals Hall, and the Agricultural Hall. Each of these revi- 

 talized exhibit areas is really a museum in itself. Each one alone 

 has great visitor-attraction potential purely from an educational 

 standpoint. Furthermore, in each of the modernized halls, the Smith- 

 sonian has been guided by new general museum principles and has 

 used a variety of means to achieve the objectives mentioned above 

 which the curators and designers had in mind in plamiing and 

 constructing the halls. 



The basic new pliilosophy of the nature of the museum that is illus- 

 trated in each rejuvenated hall is that exhibits should be so presented 

 that the serious visitor may be both interested and instructed. In 

 each new hall a visitor may, of course, be casually entertained, 

 but he also is exposed to accurate, well-organized, attractively ar- 

 ranged segments of vital human knowledge. Thus, if he spends 

 a moderate amount of time and effort in studying the sequences of 

 objects and carefully reads the labels, he will be amply rewarded 

 by a deeper and wider understanding of the complex world in 

 which he lives. Aided by the modern exhibit techniques now avail- 

 able, the story of man and his world unfolds before the visitor as 

 he walks from hall to hall. These new exhibits are in marked 

 contrast to the static displays of yesterday. In the old days the 

 viewer may have been impressed by the abundance of material ex- 

 hibited but, for the most part, was neither instructed nor motivated 

 to future study. 



The Gems and Minerals Hall may be taken as an example of 

 the effect of this new philosophy in dealing with a specific subject- 

 matter field. The mineral collections of the Smithsonian, said to 

 be the best of their kind in the world, have been built up during 

 more than a century by gifts from interested friends all over the 

 globe and by transfer to the Institution of outstanding specimens 

 from the United States Geological Survey and other Federal bureaus. 

 These collections are so extensive and important that many geolog- 

 ical scientists come from every part of the country each year to 

 work in our laboratories on special problems that can be solved 

 only by the study of this material. 



The public exhibits in the new Gems and Minerals Hall, how- 

 ever, represent only selected specimens from the total mineral collec- 

 tions of the Smithsonian. The problem, therefore, was first to select 



