Chapter 7 



New Exhibits^ 

 New Offices 



EXACTLY WHEN THE NEW NATIONAL MUSEUM opened 

 is a minor point for debate, since the building fn st 

 served as a meeting place in 1908; collections were first 

 stored in tmfinished halls early in 1909; and the main 

 floor of the north wing was first opened to visitors on 

 March 17, 1910. This last date, marking its public de- 

 but, seems the best one to pick as the building's official 

 birthday. 



Over the next year, "only the remaining part of the 

 space allotted to ethnology and consisting of the north- 

 ern sections of the east and west ranges on the same 

 floor were made accessible," but in 1911 and 1912 "much 

 greater progress was shown,'" especially in the area of 

 exhibits. While safety dictated steel- or metal-covered 

 storage cases as soon as they could be obtained, aes- 

 thetics, in the head curator's view, dictated wooden 

 display cases. These were traditional for more than half 

 a century, and because the Museum provided plans 

 and specifications for many other new or changing mu- 

 seums, similar display cases were seen throughout the 

 country. 



Although much of the work had to be contracted out, 

 many of the new display cases were built by the car- 

 pentry and cabinet shops in the new National Museum. 

 Mr. Cole, who had been chief carpenter for Secretary 

 Langley's effort to btiild a man-carrying aircraft, moved 

 in to take charge, and the sawing of mahogany and 

 pine wafted a pleasant smell through a large part of 

 the ground floor. Dark mahogany was standard for all 



Hall of Archeology of Mexico, Central and South America 

 on the second floor (Hall 26), taken from the .stairs looking 

 south. Those are calendar stones in the foreground and on 

 the wall to the right. The glyphs on that wall are Mayan, 

 and the cases contain Aztec pottery. Behind the calendar 

 stone is a model of the Castillo at Chichen Itza, and behind 

 that, partly in the shadow, is Coatlique, main mother 

 goddess of the Aztecs. The Mayan stele behind it is from 

 Capan, Honduras. Because the models of the Serpent 

 columns, which were at the door of the Castillo, are not 

 included in the hall, this view probably was taken before 

 1924. 



display cases in all the halls. When these were com- 

 pleted, the shop spent decades building wooden storage 

 cases that were then covered in the sheet-metal shop 

 and sent off to the curators, who could never get enough 

 of them. By 1912 the three Smithsonian buildings con- 

 tained "2,724 exhibition cases of all kinds and sizes, 

 5,990 storage cases and pieces of laboratory furniture, 

 2,800 pieces of office and miscellaneous furniture, 32,976 

 unit specimen drawers of wood, 4,712 unit specimens 

 drawers of steel, 6,839 insect drawers, and 13,253 mis- 

 cellaneous specimens drawers and boxes of various 

 sizes."" 



About a year after the building opened, the new 

 Museum experimented with the concept of opening 

 for half a day on Sundays, and the public loved it. On 

 October 15, 1911, a local paper reported: "The New 

 National Museum will have its second Sunday opening 

 today. The program is a more inviting one than that 

 which attracted 15,000 to the institution at the initial 

 Sunday opening a week ago for two new exhibits have 

 been installed and several of the old ones have been 

 repaired and rearranged. The musetun's corps of tax- 

 idermists, preparators and cabinet makers have been 

 busily engaged since Monday transferring and com- 

 pleting the exhibits. 



"Zoology and paleontology," the article continued, 

 "is the subject matter of the two new exhibits, which 

 have been located on the first and second floors of the 

 buildings. It is announced that the rotunda on the first 

 floor will be open, as will the east hall of that floor and 

 the northern part of the west range on the second floor. 

 It is in these rooms that the zoological and paleonto- 

 logical exhibits will be displayed.'" 



Installing the new exhibits was hard work, and George 

 Perkins Merrill remarked: "At best the head of a de- 

 partment or division has not been able to depend on 

 more than a moiety of each day for research, and in 

 times when exhibits are in preparation he has been 

 obliged to dispense with even that. There are few forms 

 of literary work, it must be added, that require greater 

 care than that of label writing. To be able to state con- 

 cisely and clearly the essential facts concerning an object 



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