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Annals of the Smithsonian Institution 2000 



what museum historians say. Educators can download mate- 

 rials and ideas for classroom use and then plan a museum 

 visit to watch the preservation project firsthand. 



From the nineteenth century on, recordings of spoken 

 words and music have allowed us to listen to history. The 

 Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Congress have been 

 collecting these recordings — hundreds of thousands of them, 

 from the sounds of Native American music, dance, and story- 

 telling, to Woody Guthrie singing the original "This Land Is 

 Your Land," to speeches by every American president since 

 Theodore Roosevelt. But the original recordings are deterio- 

 rating, and sounds that have inspired generations of listeners 

 are in jeopardy. This year, the two organizations received a 

 $750,000 grant through the U.S. Congress from Save Amer- 

 ica's Treasures, a bipartisan program to preserve our cultural 

 heritage. With the help of experts in the field, they will re- 

 store and preserve the originals, create digital and archival 

 copies, and make recordings available to millions of listeners 

 on the Web and in CD form. 



Major Building Projects 



Creating inviting public spaces 



"Pardon Our Progress!" proclaim the banners stretched 

 across the exterior of the National Air and Space Museum, 

 signaling the renovation of the building and the replacement 

 of its signature skylights and window walls. Similar evidence 

 of progress is everywhere at the Smithsonian, where an un- 

 precedented number of building and renovation projects are 

 under way. 



From brand-new facilities, to major renovations, to build- 

 ing repairs, Smithsonian spaces inside and out are receiving 

 renewed attention. The Institution's landmark buildings, 

 like its collections, deserve expert care. Urgent maintenance 

 and restoration have moved up on the agenda. As Secretary 

 Lawrence M. Small says, "Americans who make a pilgrimage 

 to their nation's capital should be open-mouthed in awe at 

 their national treasures, not at the state of disrepair of the 

 buildings in which they are housed." 



Construction cranes appeared at the east end of the Mall 

 this year as site preparation began for the National Museum 

 of the American Indian — the first museum conceived and 

 designed by Native Americans, not just about them. The 

 curvilinear building, with exterior walls of Minnesota lime- 

 stone, will be surrounded by landscaping that evokes 

 American Indian lands. 



Visitors will enter through a five-story welcoming area 

 called the Potomac, where they will be immersed in living 

 traditions. Three inaugural exhibitions will present the 

 philosophies, histories, and identities of indigenous peoples 

 from a Native perspective — a revolutionary change from 

 traditional museum practice. Research and exrensive collabo- 

 ration with 18 Native communities in the United States, 

 Latin America, and Canada have been complered for these 

 exhibitions. 



Meanwhile, at the museum's Cultural Resources Center in 

 Suitland, Maryland, staff coordinated the complex move of 

 the museum's renowned collection of more than 800,000 

 ethnographic and archaeological objects from the Research 

 Branch in the Bronx, New York. In 2000, they brought the 

 total number of objects prepared for the journey ro more 

 than 67,300, packing them in custom-made mounts and 

 giving each truckload a Native blessing. 



It is a puzzle of huge proportions: fitting more than 300 

 spectacular flying machines into the soaring spaces of the Na- 

 tional Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. 

 Site work on the new storage, restoration, and exhibition fa- 

 cility at Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia 

 has just begun, but a team of curators, collection managers, 

 and exhibit designers is already solving the puzzle. 



The center is named for aviation business executive Steven 

 F. Udvat-Hazy, who has contributed $65 million to the 

 museum and co-chairs its capital campaign. Udvar-Hazy 

 professes an early love for aerospace and aviation and a deep 

 respect for their role in shaping our world. He says he hopes 

 the center will be an enjoyable, educational experience that 

 inspires those same feelings in others. 



For the museum planning team, it helps that the 

 761,000-square-foot structute is almost three football fields 

 long and 10 stories high. Using computer-aided design, they 

 arrange plastic cutouts in a scale model of the building to 

 create a three-dimensional view of the artifacts within the 

 exhibition space, suspended from the arches and displayed 

 on the floor. 



Three ro four million visitors a year are anticipated when 

 the Udvar-Hazy Center opens in December 2003, the cen- 

 tennial month of the Wright Brothers' historic flight in 

 Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. 



The renovation of the Patent Office Building, home to the 

 Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Por- 

 trait Gallery, began this year, with both museums closed for 

 the duration but active and visible on the Web and in exhi- 

 bitions from their collections touring the country. The 

 Smithsonian purchased the Victor Building in downtown 

 Washington to provide consolidated office space for Smith- 

 sonian administrative offices, as well as staff of the two 

 museums and the Archives of American Art. 



Other projects have created comfortable visitor spaces or 

 improved collection display and storage. The loggias, or 

 open galleries, overlooking the courtyard of the Freer Gallery 

 of Art opened to the public for the first time in June, made 

 possible by a generous grant from the Philip L. Graham 

 Fund. Visitors can relax among the refreshed courtyard 

 plantings and enjoy two bronze sculptures by American 

 sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens that are on view in the 

 east loggia. 



The Renwick Gallery's Grand Salon, considered one of 

 Washington's most beautiful public spaces, reopened in June 

 after a six-month refurbishment that re-created the elegant 

 setting of a nineteenth-century collector's picture gallery. 

 While the Smithsonian American Arr Museum is closed, 

 170 paintings and sculptures from its collection are on view 

 in rhe Grand Salon and the Octagon Room. 



