Statement by the Secretary 



I. Michael Heyman 



Museums and the New Millennium 



In the last five years, from 1994 to 1999, 1 have had the 

 opportunity to report to you on the many ways that the 

 Smithsonian serves the nation. Last year, for example, I took 

 up the theme of the Smithsonian's extensive commitment to 

 the increase of knowledge through scientific research and 

 scholarship in the humanities. This, my final report to you as 

 Secretary, is an attempt to share my view of the Smithsonian's 

 significant role as a family of great museums. In some ways, 

 what has happened to museums in our society in the decades 

 since the end of World War II is nothing less than miracu- 

 lous. And there is no better way to understand these changes 

 than to look at our remarkable Smithsonian Institution. 



When we otganized our 150th anniversary celebration, 

 which I described in my 1996 report, researchers went back 

 to the hundred-year commemoration, in 1946, and discov- 

 ered to our collective amazement that the entire staff of the 

 Smithsonian was then about 400 people and the number of 

 museums, incorporating various kinds of collections and 

 stretching various definitions, was four. Fifty years later, the 

 staff had grown ro roughly 6,500 and the number of muse- 

 ums to 16 and research institutes to five. In 1946, our 

 museums recorded more than 2 million visits. At last count, 

 that figure was more than 28 million. By any standard, 

 that's amazing growth. 



This expansion reflects the vitality of the American 

 museum community in general. There are more than 8,300 

 museums listed in the Official Museum Director}, which some 

 actually consider an undercount. According to the summer 

 1999 issue of Daedalus, the journal of the American Acad- 

 emy of Arts and Sciences, when statistics were last reported 

 in a 1989 study called Museums Count, "only 4 percent [of 

 America's museums] were founded before 1900. Three- 

 quarters have been founded since 1950 and 40 percent since 

 1970." In the last two years of this waning century, Daedalus 



reports, it is estimated that 150 museums will be built or 

 significantly expanded. 



The Smithsonian is a part of this forward momentum. 

 At the end of September 1999, 1 had the pleasute of break- 

 ing ground with Native Americans from all regions for the 

 National Museum of the American Indian to be built in 

 the shadow of the Capitol on the last available site on the 

 National Mall. My successor as Secretary, Larry Small, will 

 have the pleasure of presiding over another great occasion 

 one day, the opening of the enormous extension to the 

 National Air and Space Museum at Dulles Airport outside 

 Washington, D.C. Clearly, museums count more than ever 

 before, in every meaning of the word. 



But why? 



Let me make a few guesses. 



At one level, the explosive growth of museums may sim- 

 ply have a great deal to do with the growth in prosperity, in 

 the desire for meaningful leisure activities, and in the expan- 

 sion of our college-educated population, all of which have 

 marked the postwat decades. At the Smithsonian, we have 

 particularly benefited from the growth in national confi- 

 dence in the era some have called the American Century. 

 At least four of our Smirhsonian museums — the National 

 Museum of American History, the National Museum of 

 American Art, the National Portrait Gallery, and, above all, 

 the National Air and Space Museum — burst forth out of that 

 need to represent our national pride. Other museums around 

 the country have come to express civic, regional, community, 

 and ethnic pride in the same spirit. 



As a corollary, I suspect museums have come to be places 

 of validation in a society that has seen the erosion of many 

 social institutions traditionally representing trust and au- 

 thority. While religion and family retain their strong 

 foundations for many Americans, other Americans are expe- 

 riencing uncertainty and drift. Museums have always been 

 places where society asserts that certain things are impor- 



