8 



Annals of the Smithsonian Institution 1999 



competition for the public's attention from the many dimen- 

 sions of entertainment available on television or movie screens, 

 in the great theme parks, and even in the retail universe repre- 

 sented by Niketown or the Hard Rock Cafes around the 

 nation and the world. A recent article in the Harvard Business 

 Review has created a sensation in both the museum and the re- 

 tail worlds by heralding the arrival of what the two authors 

 call "the experience economy." Cultural institutions must in- 

 creasingly appeal to an audience making choices among a 

 variety of experiences and must learn not only to recognize 

 this role but also explicitly to define what is unique and valu- 

 able in the educational and aesthetic experiences they offer. 



I am one who believes that cultural institutions have a re- 

 sponsibility to engage actively with the popular culture 

 while not confusing our purposes with those of the commer- 

 cial world. One of my initiatives that has surprised a number 

 of traditionalists has been to open a discussion with Holly- 

 wood about possible partnerships in the creation of what I 

 would call a quality brand in films, television, and possibly 

 even theatrical performance. At the moment, I am opti- 

 mistic that we can create programs with both educational 

 and entertainment value. 



We have curators working on Mel Gibson's next film, an 

 American Revolutionary epic, The Patriot, now in produc- 

 tion. We are also planning three films for television on the 

 African American experience, with some of the best actors, 

 producers, and directors in Hollywood. Museums can and 

 must have influence far beyond their buildings. 



Less surprising but equally important is my commitment 

 and that of my colleagues in other museums to use the 

 atest technologies to make available what we have to offer in 

 new ways to audiences throughout the nation and the world. 

 One of my first statements as Secretary was to announce my 

 hope to create an electronic Smithsonian, and I have seen our 

 Web site become one of the most visited cultural sites in the 

 world. We are committed to digitizing millions of our objects 

 in order to guarantee universal access to our collections, only 

 3 to 4 percent of which we can actually display. 



But digitization is, of course, just the beginning. We can 

 all foresee a future when not only flat images but the full 

 three dimensions of objects can be easily communicated elec- 

 tronically so they can be explored in all their wonderful 

 complexity. We have already experimented at the Smithson- 

 ian with a CD-ROM that effectively uses impressive 3D 

 technology. We will also, I am convinced, one day have cura- 

 tors able to create cyber-exhibitions that use the unique 

 properties of that medium to connect objects to contexts in 

 space and time. Imagine, if you will, an object in our collec- 

 tion of Native American artifacts returned visually to the 

 world that created it hundreds of years ago, or a natural ob- 

 ject morphed back to its place of origin in the natural world. 



The challenge here, of course, is not of imagination; we 

 can meet that. The challenge that must be solved is re- 

 sources. It is expensive to do what we must do electronically. 



And it is not only the electronic world that will test our 

 resources. Where will we find the funds to collect and con- 

 serve those millions of objects in our care? None of them are 

 getting any newer. And what of the buildings to house 



them? The Smithsonian's National Museum of the American 

 Indian requires, in addition to the museum we are building 

 on the National Mall and the exhibition facility in New 

 York, a large, separate resource center to house more than a 

 million objects in ways that respect their preservation needs 

 on the one hand and their many uses on the other. And to 

 mention another problem, where do you put a jumbo jet or 

 new spacecraft models? One of those could fill up an entire 

 wing of the National Air and Space Museum on the Mall. So 

 we build bigger and bigger facilities for them. 



The issue of the economics of museum creation and preser- 

 vation opens up a host of related issues as we contemplate our 

 future as valued social institutions. How do we judge our 

 usefulness, our reason to exist? When we are asked if we are 

 well run, what do we say? What is our standard and process 

 of accountability? These, as Steve Weil argues, are not a mat- 

 ter of insisting that museums look like the commercial world 

 but only that they more clearly articulate their own goals and 

 their basis for evaluating whether they are meeting them. 



I found the summer 1999 issue of Daedalus devoted to the 

 subject of museums to be fascinating precisely because it re- 

 vealed that museums are just now beginning to ask tough 

 definitional and structural questions about themselves, much 

 as has already happened in other contexts in the modern 

 world. Think, for example, of the realignment of the infor- 

 mation and global economy or of the continual reinvention 

 of both our political parties. 



One writer wondered whether to be called a museum a 

 place had principally to house and display objects. Another 

 wondered whether museums really do "shape anyone's val- 

 ues, validate anyone's identity, impose any lasting sense of 

 order." And another asked museums to add to their curator- 

 ial expertise "collaboration with filmmakers, game creators, 

 artists, poets, storytellers." 



There was another challenge to traditional ways of think- 

 ing in Daedalus that I found particularly telling. Many 

 museums, historically, have been quite territorial in their 

 view of their responsibilities, more competitive than coopera- 

 tive in the building and sharing of their collections. One of 

 the Smithsonian's initiatives in the last five years that I am 

 most proud of is our Affiliations Program, which establishes 

 partnerships with museums and planned museums through- 

 out the country, making available to them Smithsonian 

 collections and expertise. One example, and in fact the first of 

 our arrangements, has been the cooperation of our National 

 Museum of American History with a group in Berhlehem, 

 Pennsylvania, to create in the former steel mills a place to ex- 

 hibit America's industrial history. Objects too big to display 

 in the American History Museum will now take their place 

 in the telling of one of our nation's great stories. 



These are the best and worst of times for museums. They 

 are attracting enormous public attention; they are broaden- 

 ing the range of what they do; they are groaning under the 

 weight of expectations and resource shortfalls; they are stir- 

 ring and complaining and aspiring and competing and 

 sometimes ducking for cover. At the height of their popular- 

 ity, they are wondering what they are. 



I wouldn't have it any other way. 



