Reports of the Museums and Research Institutes 



59 



venues for the three-year tour, conservation teadied more 

 than 500 paintings and sculptures, and the cabinet shop 

 spent months readying cases for packing. By September, all 

 eighr exhibitions had debuted throughout the United States, 

 with 339,482 people attending by the close of the year. Four 

 exhibitions debuted with accompanying souvenir books 

 published, and the remaining four will be published in 

 2001. Major media coverage ranging from the Miami Herald 

 Tribune to the Minneapolis Star resulted in over $1.4 million 

 dollars in media value. Four TIME magazine advertorials 

 accompanied by four full-page color advertisements on the 

 tour helped publicize its range and scope. A half-hour syndi- 

 cated television special was created, with two advertisements 

 for the Renwick Gallery and the Treasures to Go souvenir 

 books. It aired in 1 1 markets in 2000, with more planned 

 for 2001. The Sara Roby Foundation funded an education 

 packet on "Scenes of American Life: Treasures from the 

 Smithsonian American Art Museum," which included a 

 10-minute video. Curators from the museum attended every 

 opening, giving public and member lectures on the exhibi- 

 tions, with Director Elizabeth Broun and Secretary Lawrence 

 Small attending selected venues as schedules permitted. 



Conservation readied a number of works for long-term 

 loan during the renovation. One of these was James Hamp- 

 ton's The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millenium 

 General Assembly, which will be on loan at the Abby Aldnch 

 Rockefeller Folk Art Center at Colonial Williamsburg, Vir- 

 ginia, where it opened to the public in April. Alexander 

 Calder's sculpture Nenuphar was installed at the Memphis 

 Brooks Museum of Art in Memphis, Tennessee, and Thomas 

 Hart Benton's mural Achelous and Hercules is on view at the 

 Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, Virginia. 



The Lucelia Foundation, based in Buffalo, New York, 

 awarded $65,000 for three consecutive years for a new pro- 

 gram called the Lucelia Artist Award. A $25,000 cash prize 

 will be awarded to a contemporary American artist under the 

 age of 50. Former SAAM Distinguished Scholar Sidra Stich 

 of California will serve as Executive Director of the award. 

 Jurors have been selected and nominations solicited. The 

 first prize will be announced in May 2001. 



Awards and milestones were reached in a number of areas. 

 Professor Wanda M. Corn's book The Great American Thing: 

 Modern Art and National Identity, 191 5— 1935 was awarded 

 the Charles C. Eldredge Prize for Distinguished Scholarship 

 in American Art. On September 5 , the museum formally 

 announced that all Save Outdoor Sculpture! Survey reports 

 — 31,833 — were entered into an on-line database that has 

 been under way for several years. The New Media/New 

 Century Award was announced, a new award for on-line art 

 that explores the American landscape, supported by the en- 

 ergy company Dominion. Winners will be announced in 

 early 2001. 



The museum was selected to participate in a trilateral ed- 

 ucational Web site called "Pan-American Perspectives: The 

 Land in Art." The U.S. State Department chose SAAM to 

 represent the United States and is providing $72,000 in 

 funding for the project. This first multi-lingual Web part- 

 nership links SAAM with museums in Canada and Mexico, 



under the leadership of the Canadian Heritage Information 

 Network. The site is expected to launch in April 2001. 



In education, a new project began entitled the Virtual 

 Community Development Project, which trains docents as 

 hosts for students of American art around the United States 

 through Internet and video-conferencing. A second issue 

 of "-del Corazon!," the museum's bilingual interactive 

 Webzine (a magazine on the Web) for teachers and students, 

 focusing on SAAM's Latino art collection launched on the 

 Web site. 



Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory 



Irwin I. Shapiro, Director 



Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the scientific 

 staff at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) 

 carries out a wide variety of research programs in astronomy 

 and astrophysics, Earth and space science, and science 

 education in close collaborarion with the Harvard College 

 Observatory (HCO). The combined staff has more than 300 

 scientists, with many holding joint appointments. Together, 

 the two observatories form the Harvard-Smithsonian Center 

 for Astrophysics (CfA) to coordinate related activities under 

 a single director. 



Research is organized in seven divisions, with an addi- 

 tional department devoted to science education. And, while 

 both observatories retain their separate identities, the com- 

 bined CfA staff actively cooperates, conducting programs of 

 study among the following divisions and department: 

 Atomic and Molecular Physics, High Energy Astrophysics, 

 Optical and Infrared Astronomy, Planetary Sciences, Radio 

 and Geoastronomy, Solar and Stellar Physics, Theoretical 

 Astrophysics, and Science Education. 



Facilities 



Observational facilities include the multi-purpose Fred 

 Lawrence Whipple Observatory (FLWO) on Mt. Hopkins in 

 Arizona and the Oak Ridge Observatory in Massachusetts. 

 The major instrument on Mt. Hopkins is the recently reded- 

 icated Multiple Mirror Telescope (MMT), now converted to a 

 single-mirror telescope, 6.5 m in diameter, operated jointly 

 with the University of Arizona. Also located at the FLWO 

 are a 10-m-diameter reflector to detect gamma rays, a 

 1.2— m imaging optical/infrared telescope, and a 1.5-m 

 spectroscopic telescope; it also houses a 1.3-m optical 

 telescope, operated by the University of Massachusetts and 

 other partners, and an optical and infrared interferometer 

 (IOTA), built in collaboration with the universities of Mass- 

 achusetts and Wyoming and MIT's Lincoln Laboratory. 



Major support facilities in Cambridge include a panoply 

 of computers connected by a local area network, a central en- 

 gineering department, a machine shop, a large astronomical 

 library, design and drafting capability, and in-house printing 

 and publishing services. 



