stalled an exhibit of a Geiger counter and a piece of 

 uranium ore on the wall outside his office, but though 

 he complained about the infuriating ticking noise, the 

 display remained because of public interest in atomic 

 energy in all its aspects. 



The Geological Survey had already gained some ex- 

 hibit space, formerly used for invertebrate zoology, in 

 the northwest corner of the second floor. A "Coral 

 Room" was built in 1947, and some of the studies of 

 Pacific atolls that had been drilled and cored after World 

 War II were conducted there. The Department of Ag- 

 riculture entomologists also grew in number and oc- 

 cupied all of the west range on the second floor. Before 

 World War II they had changed a few of the exhibit 

 alcoves into cell-like offices; now there were individual 

 cubicles on both sides of the hall, with a passageway 

 between allowing what few tourists wandered that way 

 to walk from one side of the building to the other. 

 Everyone who was in Hall 27 recalls the cases in the 

 passageway containing the giant spider crab and the 

 giant clam, the last remnants of the invertebrate ex- 

 hibits that had been in the area. 



Eventually the east side of this row of offices, facing 

 the west court, was decked over to provide needed 

 storage space for insect cases. This made the little cu- 

 bicles even worse, for there was no air circulation. Dur- 

 ing the summer, at least two of the entomologists took 

 off their shoes and shirts bef ore starting work. Among 

 those who put u|) with these conditions was R. E. Snod- 

 grass, from the Department of Agriculture. He ex- 

 emplifies the remarkable Museum retirees, for he re- 

 tired in 1945 and completed fourteen papers and a 

 major book on insect morphology before his death sev- 

 enteen years later. 



Swamped with New Collections 



By the start of the 1950s, the staff was being swamped 

 with new collections coming in by the thousands. While 

 the Museum's functions of record and research were 

 going along about as well as might be expected with 

 the funds available, its exhibit halls were dreadful by 

 the standards of the larger American museums. George 

 Brown Goode had warned that a finished museum was 

 a dead museum, yet to too many minds, once a major 

 exhibit had been installed nothing more needed to be 

 done. 



Secretary Wetmore had long been aware of the prob- 

 lems. As early as 1939 he had declared, "Much of our 

 exhibition equipment is antiquated, and added per- 

 sonnel is required for its proper care and moderniza- 

 tion.'"' But despite his efforts, there was never money 

 in the budget for major revisions. Frugality was as much 

 a way of life as it had been during the Depression. 

 Ernest Lachner, hired in 1949 as an ichthyologist, re- 

 quested a pair of stainless-steel forceps and was refused 

 because no funds were available. When Harold Saun- 

 ders of the Geological survey asked the supply clerk 



for a pencil, she responded, "What are you going to 

 use it for?" Whatever planning had been done for any 

 new halls was lost in the shuf fle of World War II. 



Although all the Museum departments had made 

 some changes in their exhibits since the 1930s, what 

 little exhibit work was being done — with the exception 

 of Perrygo's habitat displays — was in effect only adding 

 a bit more of the same. From the tourist's point of view, 

 nothing changed. One quick visit was more than enough, 

 as the reactions of local citizens attested. One who had 

 visited the Museum during this period likened it to a 

 funeral parlor because of the dark mahogany cases and 

 dim lights, and another thought the large, open hall- 

 ways looked like a bowling alley. Another, taking a field 

 trip with a university professor, suddenly became aware 

 that the exhibits were arranged to present a logical 

 story; but a visitor without a knowledgeable guide would 

 have been unlikely to understand the presentation. 



Changing Exhibit Concepts 



In the late 1940s, several Museum committees sug- 

 gested that the Smithsonian ask for additional funds 

 specifically designated to improve the exhibits. Frank 

 Taylor, a curator in the Arts and Industries Building 

 and a "museum man" of the Goode mold, wrote a care- 

 ful justification of the need for $300,000 to fund a 

 change in the public displays. He became chairman of 

 an overall exhibits committee that changed the concept 

 of exhibits throughout the Smithsonian. The others on 

 this original committee were Paul Gardner, then with 

 the National Collection of Fine Arts; Herbert Fried- 

 mann, the curator of birds; and John C. Ewers, associate 

 curator of anthropology. Ewers, already an outstanding 

 ethnologist of American Indians when he joined the 

 staff in 1946, had made displays for the National Park 

 Service and had planned, designed, and executed the 

 Plains Indian Museum in Browning, Montana. The Na- 

 tional Museum hired him with the expectation that 

 because of his interest and experience, he might be able 

 to do something to improve the displays in addition to 

 his research." 



Another key appointment from the standpoint of 

 exhibits was Clifford Evans, who came to the Depart- 

 ment of Anthropology in 1951. In the thirty years be- 

 fore he died, he did a great deal of research on Latin 

 America in partnership with his wife, Betty Meggers. 

 He aroused not only his department but the Museum 

 in general. He was a person of forceful opinions, and 

 though some of his ideas were not accepted, they were 

 never ignored.' 



Evans and Meggers were intrigued by the new idea 

 of possible human contact between Japan and South 

 America, and they soon installed a case with a few ob- 

 jects and maps near the elevator in the second-floor 

 west north hall, adjacent to the mummies. It was the 

 first new scientific exhibit for anthropology in about 

 forty years. Shortly thereafter, they went into the east 



86 



The Exhibits 



