Communicating ideas to the general public is diffi- 

 cult, especially when most of the information is to be 

 conveyed through objects. Even a professional scientist 

 should not criticize a hall until he has tried designing 

 one of his own, for no matter how an exhibit is ar- 

 ranged, some viewers will respond to it and some will 

 not. Because the Museum's new halls were to cut across 

 several departmental lines, scientifically trained ex- 

 hibits specialists were hired to serve as liaison between 

 curators and designers. One aptly described her posi- 

 tion as occupying the space between a rock and a hard 

 place. 



This third generation of exhibit halls is coming along 

 more slowly than the second generation of the 1950s 

 and 1960s, but it is coming along. In Hall 6 — the first 

 to open, in September 1974 — "the visitor can start out 

 at the beginning of the Ice Age when the Earth was 

 dominated by big mammals and end up in a cultural 

 milieu dominated by man.'"^ The hall, which includes 

 two more Matternes murals, also featured two giant 

 ground sloths nicely displayed on a central platform, 

 behind piano wire strung from floor to ceiling. The 

 specimens could be seen without obstruction, but vis- 

 itors kept plucking the wires, and eventually the entire 

 hall had to be closed and redesigned. One of the skel- 

 etons the vertebrate paleontology laboratory was par- 

 ticularly proud of was a woolly mammoth. The aim of 

 the preparators is to make supports as unobtrusive as 

 possible, and it took Leroy Glenn a full year to drill the 

 limb bones and place supporting iron inside so that the 

 specimen appeared freestanding. When the hall was 

 temporarily closed, the mammoth was among the spec- 

 imens that had to be shifted. Like all large elephants, 

 it presented problems, clearing the ceiling by less than 

 an inch. Decades ago this area was the hall of physical 

 geology, and if there was ever a case of metamorphosis 

 in the Museum, Hall 6 is it. 



Physical geology still occupied Hall 20 on the second 

 floor, but while a few of Merrill's stone cubes and slabs 

 remained, this too was otherwise a total renovation. The 

 exhibit was a long time in preparation, and a series of 

 different designers were involved. Our understanding 

 of geology changed dramatically during the 1960s, when 

 plate tectonics became almost a household term; the 

 hall managed to bring in these newer concepts. At its 

 east end are the meteorites, and between them and the 

 main part of the hall are moon rocks. These specimens 

 may once have ranked third in interest after the Hope 

 Diamond and the Insect Zoo, though they no longer 

 attract the crowds they did at first. 



Some Exhibit Problems 



There were some problems with the bicentennial ex- 

 hibit that opened November 19, 1975. Our Changing 

 Land presented the concept of change through time of 

 the Washington-area environment. The central corri- 



dor was a forest, but all the trees had uniformly large 

 trunks more than four feet in diameter — the designer's 

 effort to transform the brick supporting pillars of the 

 building. The forest never looked real, and many peo- 

 ple headed straight for the escalator. The exhibit stayed 

 until the foyer was renovated to create the Evans Gal- 

 lery. 



On the first floor, in Hall 10 above the foyer, the 

 ecological exhibit // All Depends had opened a few years 

 earlier. It was in part tropical rain forest: "Modeled of 

 papier-mache and plastic, after sketches and photo- 

 graphs taken in Panama and South American jungles, 

 the exhibit's trees, foliage, and vines were enclosed in 

 a mirrored ceiling-high silo. Walking into this dimly lit 

 enclosure, visitors had the illusion that they were in the 

 center of a vast tropical forest — with trees rising 80- 

 100 feet above their heads.'"' It was a great illusion. At 

 the last minute there was concern that the silo would 

 act as a chimney in the event of fire, and a special 

 halogen gas system was installed in the attic above the 

 hall. 



"Earth Day" came to America in 1970, and the other 

 part ot Hall 10 was a response of sorts to public concern 

 for the environment. Its exhibits dealt with various as- 

 pects of ecology apart from rain forests, with emphasis 

 on man's impact on nature. The many pieces of au- 

 diovisual equipment in this hall kept giving trouble, 

 which cooled enthusiasm for using so much such equip- 

 ment in exhibits thereafter. When the hall finally closed, 

 few were sorry to see it go. Later there was talk of 

 modifying the hall to a display showing the interrela- 

 tions of plants and insects. A giant model grasshopper 

 was fabricted but never put on public display. The trees 

 went to Hall 23. Some temporary shows were staged 

 in Hall 10. including one by the Russian government, 

 Siberia: Land of Promise. Still later it was used as a supply 

 room and for temporary storage while a new exhibit 

 was being planned. 



Hall 23, the first new hall of the 1950s renaissance, 

 had been done by Evans and Meggers. The fust hall 

 to be done for a third time — by Evans and Meggers 

 again, plus a committee — it reopened quietly in the fall 

 of 1975. While it was closed for construction, a freeze- 

 dried parrot was placed in one of the trees. One day 

 someone noticed that nothing remained except the 

 skeleton, moths and beetles having eaten it. The stuffed 

 cormorants at the north end of the hall have been more 

 successful in resisting infestation. Pampas grass was 

 brought in from Argentina, though its arrival was de- 

 layed for a long time by the American Embassy's in- 

 ability to understand why it should accept a shipment 

 of hay for transportation to Washington.'" A booklet 

 to accompany the hall was planned, but funds were not 

 sufficient for it. Later, booklets were printed to sup- 

 plement the Insect Zoo and the Ice Age Hall, among 

 others, and are sold at the Museum Shop. 



"Modern Times' 



121 



