There was a reason why James Smithson coupled the 

 "increase" wich the "diffusion" of knowledge. The 

 Smithsonian's commitment to "discovery" can mean at the 

 purest level of research the expansion of human knowledge 

 beyond anything grasped before, but "discovery" also happens 

 whenever any one of us encounters and understands 

 something we did not know before. Thar process is repeated 

 millions of times in exhibitions at the Institution and in those 

 presented by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling 

 Exhibition Service, at programs provided by The Smithsonian 

 Associates and by Smithsonian Productions, in the wealth of 

 articles in Smithsonian magazine, and in the expanding wotld 

 of the electronic Smithsonian, which now welcomes millions 

 of visitors each month to our home page on the Wotld Wide 

 Web, bttp:! I www.si.edu. 



But to return to the concerns expressed at the "What 

 About Increase?" conference, very few of our visitors associate 

 the process of research with the exhibitions and programs 

 they enjoy. In her address to that meeting, Maxine Singet, 

 president of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C., 

 and chair of the Smithsonian's Commission for the Future, 

 explained that researchers themselves have "failed to convey to 

 people . . . how we come to know things and what the 

 standards of knowing are." 



I find that a very fair observation. Very often exhibitions 

 and programs provide the fruits of investigation but little 

 about the process itself. What were the questions posed' How 

 were conclusions reached? Do questions remain? If the 

 information is groundbreaking, we need to know that. If it is 

 a synthesis of what is already known, tell us that as well. 



Some of our most exciting programs are now geared exactly 

 to do that — to let the public in on the workings of research. 

 One of my favorites in a scientific field is "Think Tank," a 

 complete reworking of the small mammal house at the 

 National Zoo. "Our goal," according to the head of the team 

 that produced it, Ben Beck, "is to engage the public in a field 



of study that has challenged scientists for 2,000 years." 

 Visitots are exposed to monitors showing various aspects of 

 animal behavior such as a group of beavers building a dam 

 and asked, "Is rhis thinking?" The answers are not clear-cut 

 and point to questions about how we define thinking and its 

 component elements of planning and flexibility. At the heart 

 of the installation is the opportunity to observe behavioral 

 scientists interacting with orangutans in a language project 

 based on communication through touch-screen computer 

 technology and a new symbolic language created at the 

 National Zoo. 



Unlike research in the sciences, research in the humanities 

 does not proceed through experimentation as much as 

 through the search for meaning in human history and 

 expression. Because the process is more subjective, it is less 

 easily demonstrated to our visitors, but rwo curators at the 

 Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden are at work on a 

 groundbreaking exhibition that might just do the trick. To 

 mark the museum's 25th anniversary in October 1999, Neal 

 Benezra and Olga M. Viso are examining what has happened 

 to the idea and ideal of beauty in the art of the twentieth 

 century. By reviewing how, in Benezra's words, "time-honored 

 aesthetic standards" had come to be considered by many 

 artists and critics "no longer valid," the curators will show 

 through the juxtaposition of various works of art changing 

 visions of the beautiful but draw no absolute conclusions. 

 "Our question to viewers," Benezra says, "will be the same 

 one that we have been struggling with: 'What could beauty 

 in art be at the end of the twentieth century?"' 



These two exhibitions, one in the sciences and one in the 

 humanities, point the way to the Smithsonian of the future, a 

 place committed to sharing with the public not only what 

 we know, but what we do not yet know, sharing the questions 

 we ask and the approach we take to answering them. That 

 Smithsonian will be a "college of discoverers" for the 

 twenty-firsr century. 



