Reports of the Museums and Research Institutes 



31 



three planned exhibitions: "Our Universes," "Our Peoples," 

 and "Our Lives." 



A December 2, 1999, gala for the benefit of the endow- 

 ment fund of the museum's George Gustav Heye Center 

 endowment for the museum was held at the Pierre Hotel in 

 New York City and resulted in a net profit of $1.2 million. 

 U.S. Senator Daniel K. Inouye, NBC News anchor Tom 

 Brokaw, Ted Turner, Jane Fonda, and others helped to lead 

 the event for the NMAI. 



A new NMAI four-color 3 2 -page quarterly publication 

 named American Indian was developed during 1999 to replace 

 the NMAI's use of Native Peoples magazine as well as the Run- 

 ner and Quarterly Calendar. American Indian will be sent to all 

 NMAI members beginning in January with a winter issue. 

 The publication will focus the museum's mission-driven 

 work throughout the hemisphere and will present NMAI 

 members with an insider's view of the museum. The publica- 

 tion also will raise awareness of our development needs, as 

 well as the progress of the Mall museum construction and 

 programs and exhibitions at the GGHC. 



Design and construction of the NMAI Mall museum was 

 assumed by the Smithsonian in 1999. Assisting the Smith- 

 sonian are Polshek Partnership, Tobey + Davis, joint venture 

 architects; Johnpaul Jones (Cherokee/Choctaw), design con- 

 sultant; Lou Weller (Caddo/Cherokee), design consultant; 

 EDAW, landscape architects; Severud Associates, structural 

 engineers; Cosentini Associates, mechanical/electrical engi- 

 neers; Donna House (Navajo/Oneida), ethnobotanist 

 landscape consultant; and Ramona Sakiestewa (Hopi), inte- 

 rior design consultant. 



National Museum of Natural History 



Robert W. Fri, Director 



The National Museum of Natural Hisrory enhances the un- 

 derstanding of the natural world and humanity's place in it. 

 The museum's researchers study natural and cultural diver- 

 sity by collecting and identifying specimens of nature and 

 human invention, establishing relationships among them, 

 and explaining the underlying processes that generate, 

 shape, and sustain their diversity. The close linkage among 

 research, outreach, and collections stewardship is a hallmark 

 of the museum, lending perspective and authenticity to its 

 research and authority to its outreach. 



With the opening of the Samuel C. Johnson Theater and 

 the completion of work on the film Galapagos in 1999, the 

 museum embraced a vivid and accessible new medium for 

 presenting the diversity, complexity, and value of the natural 

 world. The Johnson Theater and the other facilities in the 

 new Discovery Center — the Atrium Cafe and the Museum 

 Shops — promise to make the museum an even more reward- 

 ing place to visit. 



New initiatives and technologies are making the mu- 

 seum the hub of a national network for science education. 



Through live satellite links to the museum's Electronic 

 Classroom, students and teachers take part in electronic 

 field trips and research presentations conducted by 

 Museum staff. Each participating school receives an "expe- 

 dition kit" so that during the broadcast students can 

 conduct an experiment while watching the demonstration 

 at the museum. 



Conrad Labandeira and Peter Wilf of the Paleobiology 

 Department reported in the journal Science on their srudy of 

 insect damage on fossil plant assemblages in southwestern 

 Wyoming. Their research demonstrated that insect herbi- 

 vores responded by increased levels of herbivory and in the 

 variety of damage types on host-plant species. Focusing on 

 an interval of rime from the Late Paleocene to Early Eocene 

 (from 56 to 53 million years ago) that is associated with the 

 grearest rise in global temperatures during the past 65 mil- 

 lion years, they documented the first evidence in the fossil 

 record of a long-term insect herbivore response to a major 

 temperature shift. 



Tim McCoy of the Department of Mineral Sciences has 

 been investigating how lava flows solidify on the surface of 

 Mars by studying the Martian meteorite Zagami from the 

 Smithsonian meteorite collection. The presence of different 

 rock layers in this meteorite, one of only 13 known to come 

 from Mars, suggests that lava flows may break up over long 

 cooling periods, a common process that future Mars explor- 

 ers (robots and humans) might encounter. 



The museum received an unprecedented four-year grant 

 from the National Science Foundation to support 1 3 biology, 

 geology, and anthropology students in the museum's Re- 

 search Training Program. Each summer, the program offers 

 24 to 28 undergraduate students from around the world an 

 opportunity to explore their research interests under the di- 

 rection of museum scientists. 



Working with private-sector partners Scansite 3D, Stein- 

 bichler, and Virtual Surfaces, Inc., the museum's Department 

 of Paleobiology and Morphometries Lab are producing a vir- 

 tual Triceratops that can be examined and manipulated by 

 computer. At the same time, scientists and conservators are 

 restoring the original fossil Triceratops and making molds 

 that will be used to cast Triceratops models for display and 

 study at other institutions. 



"Ainu: Spirit of a Northern People," the first American 

 exhibition exploring the 10,000-year-old culture of the 

 native people of northern Japan, opened April 30, 1999. 

 Produced by the museum's Arctic Studies Center, the exhibi- 

 tion and book of the same name were made possible in part 

 by the generous financial assistance of the Nippon Founda- 

 tion, Japan-United States Friendship Commission, and 

 Japan Foundation. 



The National Anthropological Archives received a grant 

 from Save America's Treasures, a partnership of the White 

 House Millennium Council and the National Ttust for His- 

 toric Preservation, to preserve and make accessible a 

 collection of 20,000 nineteenth-century Native American 

 drawings. The drawings record their makers' lives and their 

 experience of western expansion. 



