often obscured by the deterioration and restoration of his 

 paintings. The autoradiography (similar to x-radiographs) that 

 Alexander produced enabled new insights into the reclusive 

 artist's technique and sophistication. 



These are, of coutse, just snapshots from the remarkable 

 range of research activities pursued by our professional staff 

 within the Institution and around the wotld. While it would 

 be impossible here to describe them all, certain frameworks 

 caprure the spirit of inquiry across the modern Smithsonian 

 and reveal our particular strengths as a research institution. 



The recent creation at the Smithsonian of an Institute for 

 Conservation Biology, involving work pursued across many of 

 our units, reflects recognition of the need for an integrated 

 approach encompassing many scientific fields to understand 

 the complex intetdependence and fragility of the natural 

 world. At the National Zoo, for example, researchers draw 

 upon insights provided by the study of genetics, physiology, 

 behavior, evolutionary biology, and ecology to support its 

 breeding and conservation efforts around the world, with 

 special attention to the preservation of threatened animals. 

 The Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in the 

 Chesapeake Bay region devotes its long-term program to the 

 goal of gaining a landscape ecology perspective on air, land, 

 and water interactions in its coastal zone; while at the Center 

 for Earth and Planetary Studies at the National Ait and 

 Space Museum, researchers are involved in studies of arid 

 environments around the wotld as a way of evaluating climate 

 changes. 



Other scientists, at our National Museum of Natural 

 History, work to trace the evolutionary relationships that 

 connect all plants and animals, living and extinct; those 

 involved with the many research projects at the Smithsonian 

 Tropical Research Institute cope with the mystery of how 

 little we know about the nature and multimillion number of 

 species, most of them in the tropics, that make up the 

 diversity of life on Earth. 



Ftom the start, much of Smithsonian scientific research has 

 been driven by a sense of urgency. The establishment of the 

 National Zoo in 1889, for example, had its roots in the 

 concern of Smithsonian naturalist William T Homaday and 

 the thitd Smithsonian Secretary, Samuel Pierpont Langley, 

 that the population of American bison had been dangerously 

 reduced. So concerned were they over the disappearance of this 

 distinctly North American ungulate that Langley and 

 Hornaday penned a few behind the Castle, sought land and 

 funds from Congress, and founded the National Zoo as the 

 Smithsonian's first step in species conservation. 



Modern Smithsonian researchers are in the forefront of 

 those addtessing, in the words of a recent statement, such 

 pressing issues of environmental and ecological concern as 

 "acid rain, global warming, deterioration of the ozone layer, 

 clear-cutting of tropical forests, desertification, and pollution 

 of the oceans." On an individual level, an activist research 

 agenda is typified by the work of scientists like Ronald Heyet, 

 curator of amphibians and reptiles at the National Museum of 



Narural History, whose concern about declining global frog 

 populations has led him to chait an alliance of 1,000 volunteer 

 scientists around the world to monitor the problem. 



Another way in which certain research interests throughout 

 the Institution complement each other is within the broad 

 category of the exploration of "material culture," the 

 interpretation of objects as documents of human and natural 

 history. As a repository of "things" of all sorts (141 million 

 in our collections at last count), the Smithsonian offers 

 advantages over the university in providing scholars with 

 the opportunity to examine directly and debate the various 

 meanings objects reveal across disciplines. One example was 

 a discussion held about the Hope Diamond, in which a 

 geologist provided a perspective on its natural formation 

 across millions of years, a decorative arts specialist described 

 its role as a cut and polished gemstone in the history of 

 jewelry, and a folklorist revealed the pattern of its ownership 

 from India to Europe and the United States and the legends 

 that have added so much to its mystery and attraction. 



Some of the most interesring discussions of this sort take 

 place under the auspices of the Smithsonian Forum on 

 Material Culture, which invites to its meetings any scholar 

 with an interest in cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary 

 interpretation. One meeting asked forum members 

 representing the history of technology, art history, and 

 archaeology to interpret three African chairs owned by the 

 National Museum of African Art. Another took on the 

 imaginative theme of "Captured Water," in which a curator 

 from the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery showed the ways in which 

 the culture of India has ritualized the human relationship to 

 water and a curator from the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design 

 Museum explained the many purposes fountains serve in 

 European life. Then a scientist, Michael Robinson, director of 

 the National Zoo, joined in with a description of his planned 

 exhibition on the centrality of watet to life on the planet. This 

 is the multifaceted Smithsonian at its best, sharing knowledge 

 across the full range of arts and sciences. 



Although the Smithsonian is its own community of 

 research, the Institution is as committed to the creation of 

 resources available to researchers throughout the wotld. No 

 scholar of American art can do without the extraordinary 

 range of materials collected and catalogued by our Archives of 

 American Art, with centers in California and New York, as 

 well as Washington, D.C. Othet researchers have available to 

 them such documentary collections as the advertising history 

 materials in the Archives Center of the National Museum of 

 American History, the Catalog of American Portraits at the 

 National Portrait Gallery, and the more than 200,000 

 photographs and nearly 2 million pages in unpublished 

 materials at the National Anthropological Archives. Add to 

 this the enormous resources of the Smithsonian Institution 

 Libraries system and the Smithsonian Institution Atchives, 

 among hundreds of collections of documents and objects too 

 numerous to mention, and the Institution becomes a resource 

 of vast proportions. 



