office of one of the California congressmen, and almost 

 immediately the display was corrected. In contrast to 

 this rapid change, David Pawson, who joined Inver- 

 tebrate Zoology in 1964, recalls being taken through 

 the same hall when he first arrived and noting a sand 

 dollar oriented upside down in a case. When he men- 

 tioned this, the person from Exhibits who was guiding 

 him replied in all seriousness that they were so back- 

 logged, it would be nine years before any changes could 

 be made. Pawson filed this fact away, and nine years 

 later wrote a memorandum to have the error corrected. 



Exhibits Work Continues 



On January 22, 1964, the Museum of History and Tech- 

 nology was dedicated. Attention focused on it, not on 

 Natural History, and the year was one of only partial 

 accomplishment in exhibits. Knez got his part of a hall 

 open; Wedel reinstalled a life-size diorama originally 

 constructed by Holmes. A portion of the osteology hall 

 was finished and opened informally; Jay Matternes 

 completed another mural. Even if there had been more 

 to record, the change from the Aiinuiil Report to Smitli- 

 sonian Year in 1964 resulted in much less detailed style 

 of accounting. For example: "Members of the curatorial 

 staff participated in the ])hinning and design of the hall 

 of osteology, which opened during the year, and hall 

 of cold-blooded vertebrates. The latter is in process of 

 construction, and considerable progress has been made 

 in obtaining material tor the tropical and habitat cases.""' 

 There is no indication in the departmental files when 

 either disj^hiv was opened. A projected fish hall never 

 materialized. 



"Cultures ot Atrica <nul East Asia," which opened in 

 1967, was a hall that posed interesting problems. The 

 fust hurdle faced by Cordon Cibson in installing the 

 African poi tion of the hall was the Henry Ward be- 

 quest. Ward was a British sculptor who had lived in 

 Africa as a plantation manager and then opened a stu- 

 dio in Pal is.'' When he died he left his collection to the 

 Smithsonian, with the proviso that it be exhibited as it 

 had been in his studio. Clearly there were some ad- 

 vantages in rearranging objects and moving some of 

 the statues, and equally clearly there were legal obsta- 

 cles. Cibson eventually got Kellogg's permission to look 



into the matter. At the time the Smithsonian had no 

 legal counsel, so Gibson walked across the street to the 

 Department of Justice and found an assistant attorney 

 general willing to help. Gibson wrote to all of Ward's 

 descendants and obtained permission for legal action. 

 The case went to a judge for consideration under an 

 obscure principle allowing speculation as to what the 

 donor might have done had he known the present cir- 

 cumstances. The judge ruled that Ward would have 

 been sympathetic toward a new display, and the direc- 

 tor's permission to modify the donation was forthcom- 

 ing. 



For Knez's part of the hall, John Weaver of Exhibits 

 had sculpted life-size figures of Chinese Opera actors 

 that made men dressed in women's costumes still look 

 like men, and he had prepared two-dimensional Ko- 

 rean manikins standing in a house doorway so that they 

 appeared three-dimensional. For Gibson, Weaver made 

 a diorama of northern C-ameroon showing half a dozen 

 one-sixth-life-size figures engaged in smelting iron. From 

 sketches left by Ward he sculpted a huge figure of a 

 warrior brandishing a spear, which was cast in bronze 

 for the display. The hall got rave reviews, and all the 

 papers photographed the statue."^ Weaver wanted his 

 name on the warrior, but the exhibits office refused 

 because his Civil Service job title was model maker, not 

 sculptor. Weaver quit. 



I he new exhibits program in the Museum, begun in 

 the 195()s, had now run its course, so far as natural 

 history was concerned. Progress in the last stages was 

 by individual cases, not by halls. The Smithsonian's 

 exhibits program had different outlets, partly because 

 of the great amount of work needed in the new Museum 

 of History and Technology. The Institution had new 

 art galleries opening, and many temporary exhibits were 

 being made for all its various museums and for the 

 Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, 

 launched in 1951. 



After the mid-1960s, the staff of the Museum of 

 Nattiral History gradually shifted its attention back to 

 collections and research. Still, the new exhibits had 

 pushed the Museum from the 1920s to the 1960s, in a 

 single decade. □ 



96 



The Exhibits 



