522 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1958 
World’s Columbian Exposition. By many it has been credited to 
Clark Wissler of the American Museum of Natural History, who 
elaborated and refined the principle in his widely read work “The 
American Indian,” first published in 19172 
However, both Mason and Holmes were greatly interested in the 
study of technology. Neither of them was willing to abandon the 
earlier type of exhibit of comparative technology. Holmes proposed 
the culture area as “the first and most important method” of exhibit 
organization, but he suggested that it be supplemented by synoptic 
exhibits illustrating the evolution of tools, textile arts, etc. New com- 
parative technological exhibits also were developed. In 1904 several 
cases of Indian baskets were added to the exhibits following the 
publication of Mason’s classic treatise on North American Indian 
basketry. 
By that time the museum had again outgrown its quarters. So 
crowded were the exhibit halls in the Arts and Industries building 
that there were scarcely passegeways for visitors between the cases. 
Much of the effectiveness of the life-sized groups was lost in the 
overcrowded halls. Large portions of the study collections had to be 
stored in other buildings. A new building was sorely needed to house 
the Smithsonian’s exhibits and study collections in natural history and 
anthropology. 
With the completion of the new Natural History Building on the 
north side of the Mall, the department of anthropology was moved to 
new and more spacious quarters. By the summer of 1911 most of the 
ethnological exhibits had been installed. The American Indian 
materials were arranged in two adjoining halls on the first floor pro- 
viding nearly 15,000 square feet of display space. In accordance with 
Holmes’s recommendations of a decade earlier, the life-sized groups 
were placed in line down the centers of the hails allowing room for 
visitors to view them through all four of their glassed sides. In rows 
and alcoves of cases fianking the life-sized groups were placed objects 
from the culture areas typified by the life-sized groups. Intermixed 
with these culture-area exhibits were series of cases illustrating com- 
parative technology. 
RECENT MODERNIZATION OF EXHIBITS 
For nearly 40 years after the American Indian exhibits were in- 
stalled in the Natural History Building no major changes were made 
in these displays. Meanwhile the attendance at the museum tripled 
and the number of school groups who came to the museum to see how 
Indians lived greatly increased. The life-sized groups retained their 
8 Wissler reduced Mason’s 18 American Indian culture areas to 15 and renamed most 
of them. However, in his earliest published classification of North American Indian 
culture areas, he acknowledged his debt to Mason. (Wissler, 1914, p. 449.) 
