Director Richard S. Fiske in 

 the vertebrate paleontology 

 laboratory on the ground 

 floor, east wing, receiving a 

 donation of Miocene fossil 

 shark teeth fCarcharodon) 

 from Peter J. Harrnatuk, 

 1981. 



York Botanical Garden while attending Columbia Uni- 

 versity. In 1940 he went to the Arnold Arboretum at 

 Harvard for eight years. He came to the Museum as a 

 new staff member in 1948, and for eight years curated 

 phanerograms (flowering plants) in the Castle, crowded 

 in with the other botanists. In 1956 he left for the 

 National Science Foundation, where he was the pro- 

 gram director for systematic biology. Having acquired 

 considerable administrative experience there. Smith took 

 up the directorship of the Museum with new perspec- 

 tives. 



For at least part of the time that Smith was director, 

 Kellogg had a desk in the office, concealed behind a 

 screen. Whenever anyone came to see the director. Smith 

 would indicate by hand signal whether Kellogg was in 

 the room. In spite of this, Smith was able to do a good 

 job of administration, and always seemed to be quiet 

 and self-contained, with a style quite unlike Kellogg's. 

 Many of the staff found him easy to deal with and 

 sympathetic toward new research ideas that required 

 funds. When the National Science Foundation (NSF) 

 came into existence, in the early 1950s, its relationship 

 to the Smithsonian Institution and to the Museum was 

 ambiguous. Under A. C. Smith the Museum staff was 

 given permission to apply to the NSF for funds, and a 

 number of scientists received grants. Smith was ap- 

 pointed an assistant secretary of the Smithsonian In- 

 stitution in 1962, but left after a year for the University 

 of Hawaii. 



Frank Taylor 



Also in 1962, Kellogg retired. He was succeeded by 

 Frank Taylor, who had started his career in the Arts 



and Industries Building in the early 1920s, but had an 

 earlier, indirect connection with the Institution, work- 

 ing as a messenger in the new National Museum for 

 the Bureau of War Risk Insurance. Taylor's five-year 

 tenure as overall director of the United States National 

 Museum ended July 12, 1968, when the United States 

 National Museum disappeared as an administrative en- 

 tity. His office was never in the Museum, but in Arts 

 and Industries. From 1968 until his retirement, Taylor 

 served under the title of Director-general of Museums. 

 One of two holders of a Smithsonian sixty-year pin, 

 Taylor still comes to work and is currently planning a 

 museum of the city of Washington. 



It is expected, though nowhere explicitly stated, that 

 the director of the Museum be a scientist involved in 

 administration, not an administrator. The difference 

 between a scientist serving as a leader of his peers and 

 a professional administrator overseeing scientists need 

 not be belabored, but perhaps the prime reason the 

 Museum has functioned so well is that scientists have 

 administered it. Rathbun, Ravenel, and Wetmore were 

 listed as members of the scientific staff. Curiously, Kel- 

 logg and subsequent directors have not been listed un- 

 der a department, but they are always thought of as 

 coming from a particular department. 



T. Dale Stewart 



In any event, the botanist A. C. Smith was followed in 

 early 1962 by the anthropologist T. Dale Stewart, the 

 only head curator to become director. After a dinner 

 of the Board of Regents attended by both Smith and 

 Stewart, it was announced that both would move up 

 simultaneously. Stewart's explanation of his selection 



132 



The Museum 



