new hall represenced the most ambitious public-private 

 partnership ever undertaken by the museum. Corporations, 

 foundations, and individuals contributed more than $13 mil- 

 lion toward its creation. Their generous support is reflected in 

 every part of the new space, from the dazzling fiber-optic 

 lighting in the Harry Winston Gallery and National Gem 

 Collection, to the sections of actual mine walls incorporated 

 into the Mine Gallery dioramas. 



The new hall also represents the museum's efforts to pro- 

 vide visitors to the Mall with a rewarding experience. At the 

 same time, staff were working to strengthen the museum's 

 role as a national institution for science education. During the 

 first year of the IWonder program — a three-year collaboration 

 between the museum's Naturalist Center and students and 

 faculty members at Indiana's Ball State University — nine 

 Washington-area teachers developed innovative ways to help 

 young scientists take science education into their own hands. 

 The approach they created, which encourages students to pose 

 questions and approach problems on their own, is being 

 adapted for distance learning via the Internet. 



The museum's Natural Partners program also continued to 

 expand the museum's reach, through initiatives like summer- 

 school programs created in partnership with the Dallas-based 

 company Voyager Expanded Learning and interactive science 

 labs conducted in the museum's Electronic Classroom and, in- 

 creasingly, from research sites in the field. 



The museum continued to expand its role in science educa- 

 tion at the university and professional levels as well. In 1997 

 museum scientists offered the undergraduate course Biodiver- 

 sity and Wildlife Conservation at Duke University and Johns 

 Hopkins. The curriculum, prepared by the Biodiversity pro- 

 gram, with support for the Smithsonian's new Institute for 

 Conservation Biology, covered such topics as the biology of 

 small populations, species interaction and the generation of 

 biodiversity, bioprospecting, and international conservation. 

 Biodiversity 's Dynamics of Forest Fragments program also 

 conducted a four-week summer course in conjunction with 

 the Brazilian Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazonia. 

 The course, Ecology of the Amazonian Rainforests, brought 

 students together with museum botanists, entomologists, and 

 zoologists to learn techniques of field research in the world's 

 largest and most diverse ecosystem. 



Every summer since 1980, the Research Training program 

 has offered outstanding undergraduates in systematic biology, 

 geology, and anthropology an opportunity to learn about col- 

 lections-based research by working side by side with museum 

 scientists. Students and their advisors identify critical scien- 

 tific questions, then design and conduct original research. In 

 1997, 28 students from the United States, Belize, Mexico, 

 Ecuador, Russia, and the United Kingdom researched topics 

 ranging from the description of a new species offish found in 

 the Cook Islands to the study of the Bencubbin meteorite for 

 insights into the early evolution of Earth's solar system. To 

 date, 338 students have taken part in the program. A recent 

 survey showed that more than 70% of the alumni have 



entered graduate programs, most pursuing fields that build 

 on their experiences at the museum. 



Graduate and postdoctoral students continued to con- 

 tribute to virtually every one of the museum's scientific 

 departments and programs. To give just one example from 

 1997, Dr. Diego Rasskin-Gutman completed a two-year 

 postdoctoral fellowship on the development of theoretical con- 

 cepts of morphological design in vertebrates. Dr. Rasskin-Gut- 

 man, whose work here was supported by the government of 

 Spain, also edited a book on principles and applications of 

 geometric morphometry. 



Highlights in research by curators and other staff scientists 

 included the following: 



• Dr. Douglas Owsley, Anthropology, identified four 

 skeletons from the 17th-century colony at Jamestown, Vir- 

 ginia, as the oldest known remains of African Americans. 

 The remains were recovered from a burial site decades earlier 

 but had mistakenly been described as Native American. 



• Dr. Brian Schmidt, Vertebrae Zoology, took part in an 

 expedition to the Mongolian Republic to collect and docu- 

 ment bird species living in the rocky steppe west of Ulan 

 Bator, the Gobi Desert, and mountains north and west of 

 the desert. Boldbaatar Shagdarusen, a member of the Mon- 

 golian Academy of Sciences, led the expedition. 



• Dr. Brian Huber, Paleobiology, served as microbiologist on 

 the team that recovered the best-preserved record yet found 

 of the asteroid strike that ended the Age of Dinosaurs. That 

 record — a core sample recovered from below the ocean floor 

 off the coast of Florida — is now the centerpiece of a 

 museum exhibit describing Dr. Huber's research. 



• Dr. Clyde Roper, Invertebrate Zoology, undertook the 

 second phase of a three-part quest to be the first person to 

 see a giant squid alive in its habitat. Dr. Roper's research in 

 the deep water of Kaikoura Canyon, off the coast of New 

 Zealand's South Island, was posted daily to a giant-squid 

 website, where it was followed avidly by schoolchildren 

 throughout the United States and around the world. Although 

 the giant squid remained elusive, Dr. Roper and his col- 

 leagues documented previously little-known behaviors of 

 sperm whales, the squid's only known predator. 



National Portrait Gallery 



Alan Fern, Director 



The National Portrait Gallery is dedicated to the exhibition 

 and study of portraits of people who have made significant 

 contributions to American history and culture and to the 

 study of the artists who created such portraiture. The gallery 

 sponsors a variety of scholarly and public activities for audiences 

 interested in American art and American history. 



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