West end of Hall of Geology 

 and Meteoritics (Hall 6) in 

 the 1920s or 1930s. In the 

 cases to the left are igneous 

 rocks, most trimmed to uni- 

 form rectangular shapes. The 

 meteorites are to the right, 

 but the largest specimen, in 

 the foreground, is a plaster 

 cast of a Mexican specimen. 

 Tourists would touch the cast 

 and then chip a piece away, 

 so that it continually had to 

 be repaired with black paint. 

 Eventually director Wetmore 

 was persuaded to discard 

 the cast. 



scum's show, earning accolades for his ingenuity with 

 ethnological exhibits. His "scheme for getting these 

 changing peoples on record," as a Washington news- 

 paper article observed, had first been displayed at the 

 1893 World's Fair at Chicago, and is now in use in 

 practically all the great museums of the world. This 

 new idea of the American ethnologist was to crystallize 

 into permanent form a family group of all the impor- 

 tant people. This group should be cast, life size, into 

 some permanent material. The members that go to 

 make up the group should be shown at their customary 

 activities. They should be clad as when seen at home. 

 The scene should be set as though the pages of history 

 were turned back to the time when the people lived 

 untrammeled by a higher civilization and foreshad- 

 owed by higher peculiarities of the time and place they 

 formerly occupied. . . . Dr. Holmes is a scientist and an 

 artist. He is one of the great men in ethnology in 

 America.'' 



Rathbun described the arrangement of the exhibits 

 in detail: 



Many paintings of Indians from the Catlin 

 collection and other sources were hung, and a 

 large series of transparencies of Indian subjects 

 were placed in the windows of the halls. The totem 

 poles and other carvings and paintings of the 

 northwest coast tribes, with the exception of the 

 Haida house front and its associated totem poles, 

 were installed at the south end of the middle hall, 

 where they make a striking display. In the 



arrangement of the collection from the Pueblo 

 region it was found advisable to separate the 

 antiquities from the ethnological material proper, 

 with which they have heretofore been associated, 

 and they have been transferred to the division of 

 prehistoric archeology. The construction of lay 

 figure groups progressed rapidly, and seven full- 

 sized groups of this character were added to the 

 exhibition. 



The exhibits of this division are assembled 

 primarily by geographic area, and the peoples and 

 their cultures, so far as represented, may be thus 

 studied in much the same order that the peoples 

 themselves might be visited by the traveler. Under 

 these headings the classification is by nations or 

 tribes, and by special exhibition units illustrating 

 culture as follows: tribal area, synoptic series of 

 artifacts, family groups, industrial groups, 

 individual figures, pictorial exhibits, and sculptural 

 exhibits. Of the 16 full sized lay figure groups that 

 have been planned the following 12 are finished 

 and on view, namely the Eskimo, Chilkat, Hupa, 

 Cocopa, Zuni, Sioux, Virginia, Tehuelche, Samoan, 

 Negrito, the arrow makers, and the snake dance."* 



Neil M. Judd, newly hired in 1911 as an aide in 

 ethnology, remembered the exhibits well from a dif- 

 ferent perspective. 



The new building with over ten acres of floor 

 space had been completed externally in 1910, but 

 the interior plaster was not yet dry when orders 



New Exhibits, New Off ices 



59 



