SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE

The Smithsonian Institution

Today, The Grandma have received the wonderful visit of Claire Fontaine, Jordi Santanyí  and Joseph de Ca'th Lon, three of her closest friends. 

They have not got holiday this year because of the COVID and they have been remembering their last holiday together, two years ago in Washington, DC when they were invited to participate in the Smithsonian Folklife Festival representing Catalonia, the invited culture.

It was an exciting experience and they discovered one of the most amazing and interesting museums around the world, the Smithsonian Institution, that was founded on a day like today in 1846.

The Grandma wants to pay homage to the Smithsonian Institution talking about it and its great work in a favour of culture and science.

The Smithsonian Institution, also known simply as the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and research centers administered by the government of the United States.

It was founded on August 10, 1846, for the increase and diffusion of knowledge.

The institution is named after its founding donor, British scientist James Smithson. It was originally organized as the United States National Museum, but that name ceased to exist as an administrative entity in 1967.

More information: Smithsonian Folklife Festival

Termed the nation's attic for its eclectic holdings of 154 million items, the Institution's 19 museums, 21 libraries, nine research centers, and zoo include historical and architectural landmarks, mostly located in the District of Columbia.

Additional facilities are located in Maryland, New York, and Virginia. More than 200 institutions and museums in 45 states, Puerto Rico, and Panama are Smithsonian Affiliates.

The Institution's 30 million annual visitors are admitted without charge. Its annual budget is around $1.2 billion, with two-thirds coming from annual federal appropriations. Other funding comes from the Institution's endowment, private and corporate contributions, membership dues, and earned retail, concession, and licensing revenue. Institution publications include Smithsonian and Air & Space magazines.

The British scientist James Smithson (1765-1829) left most of his wealth to his nephew Henry James Hungerford. When Hungerford died childless in 1835, the estate passed to the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an Establishment for the increase & diffusion of knowledge among men, in accordance with Smithson's will. Congress officially accepted the legacy bequeathed to the nation and pledged the faith of the United States to the charitable trust on July 1, 1836.

James Smithson & the Smithsonian Institution

The American diplomat Richard Rush was dispatched to England by President Andrew Jackson to collect the bequest. Rush returned in August 1838 with 105 sacks containing 104,960 gold sovereigns. This is approximately $500,000 at the time, which is equivalent to $12,005,000 in 2019 or equivalent to £9,520,034 in 2019. However, when considering the GDP at the time it may be a more accurate comparison to $220 million in today's terms.

Once the money was in hand, eight years of Congressional haggling ensued over how to interpret Smithson's rather vague mandate for the increase and diffusion of knowledge. Unfortunately, the money was invested by the US Treasury in bonds issued by the state of Arkansas, which soon defaulted.

After heated debate, Massachusetts representative and former president John Quincy Adams persuaded Congress to restore the lost funds with interest and, despite designs on the money for other purposes, convinced his colleagues to preserve it for an institution of science and learning.

Finally, on August 10, 1846, President James K. Polk signed the legislation that established the Smithsonian Institution as a trust instrumentality of the United States, to be administered by a Board of Regents and a secretary of the Smithsonian.

Though the Smithsonian's first secretary, Joseph Henry, wanted the institution to be a center for scientific research, it also became the depository for various Washington and U.S. government collections. The United States Exploring Expedition by the U.S. Navy circumnavigated the globe between 1838 and 1842.

More information: Smithsonian Institution

The voyage amassed thousands of animal specimens, an herbarium of 50,000 plant specimens, and diverse shells and minerals, tropical birds, jars of seawater, and ethnographic artifacts from the South Pacific Ocean. These specimens and artifacts became part of the Smithsonian collections, as did those collected by several military and civilian surveys of the American West, including the Mexican Boundary Survey and Pacific Railroad Surveys, which assembled many Native American artifacts and natural history specimens.

In 1846, the regents developed a plan for weather observation; in 1847, money was appropriated for meteorological research. The Institution became a magnet for young scientists from 1857 to 1866, who formed a group called the Megatherium Club. The Smithsonian played a critical role as the U.S. partner institution in early bilateral scientific exchanges with the Academy of Sciences of Cuba.

Construction began on the Smithsonian Institution Building, the Castle, in 1849. Designed by architect James Renwick Jr., its interiors were completed by general contractor Gilbert Cameron. The building opened in 1855.

The Smithsonian's first expansion came with construction of the Arts and Industries Building in 1881. 

Smithsonian Folklife Festival

Congress had promised to build a new structure for the museum if the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition generated enough income. It did, and the building was designed by architects Adolf Cluss and Paul Schulze, based on original plans developed by Major General Montgomery C. Meigs of the United States Army Corps of Engineers. It opened in 1881.

The National Zoological Park opened in 1889 to accommodate the Smithsonian's Department of Living Animals. The park was designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.

The National Museum of Natural History opened in June 1911 to similarly accommodate the Smithsonian's United States National Museum, which had previously been housed in the Castle and then the Arts and Industries Building. This structure was designed by the D.C. architectural firm of Hornblower & Marshall.

When Detroit philanthropist Charles Lang Freer donated his private collection to the Smithsonian and funds to build the museum to hold it, which was named the Freer Gallery, it was among the Smithsonian's first major donations from a private individual. The gallery opened in 1923.

More than 40 years would pass before the next museum, the Museum of History and Technology, renamed the National Museum of American History in 1980, opened in 1964. It was designed by the world-renowned firm of McKim, Mead & White.

The Anacostia Community Museum, an experimental store-front museum created at the initiative of Smithsonian Secretary S. Dillon Ripley, opened in the Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, D.C., in 1967. That same year, the Smithsonian signed an agreement to take over the Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration, now the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

More information: Smithsonian Twitter & Youtube

The National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum opened in the Old Patent Office Building, built in 1867 on October 7, 1968. The reuse of an older building continued with the opening of the Renwick Gallery in 1972 in the 1874 Renwick-designed art gallery originally built by local philanthropist William Wilson Corcoran to house the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

The first new museum building to open since the National Museum of Natural History was the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, which opened in 1974. The National Air and Space Museum, the Smithsonian's largest in terms of floor space, opened in June 1976.

Eleven years later, the National Museum of African Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery opened in a new, joint, underground museum between the Freer Gallery and the Smithsonian Castle. Reuse of another old building came in 1993 with the opening of the National Postal Museum in the 1904 former City Post Office building, a few city blocks from the Mall.

The Smithsonian Institution

In 2004, the Smithsonian opened the National Museum of the American Indian in a new building near the United States Capitol. Twelve years later almost to the day, in 2016, the latest museum opened: the National Museum of African American History and Culture, in a new building near the Washington Monument.

Nineteen museums and galleries, as well as the National Zoological Park, comprise the Smithsonian museums. Eleven are on the National Mall, the park that runs between the Lincoln Memorial and the United States Capitol. Other museums are located elsewhere in Washington, D.C., with two more in New York City and one in Chantilly, Virginia.

The Smithsonian has close ties with 168 other museums in 39 states, Panama, and Puerto Rico. These museums are known as Smithsonian Affiliated museums. Collections of artifacts are given to these museums in the form of long-term loans. The Smithsonian also has a large number of traveling exhibitions, operated through the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES).

In 2008, 58 of these traveling exhibitions went to 510 venues across the country.

The Smithsonian Institution announced in January 2015 that it is in talks to build its first permanent overseas exhibition space within London's Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

More information: IHG

Smithsonian collections include 156 million artworks, artifacts, and specimens. The National Museum of Natural History houses 145 million of these specimens and artifacts, which are mostly animals preserved in Formaldehyde. The Collections Search Center has 9.9 million digital records available online. The Smithsonian Institution Libraries hold 2 million library volumes. Smithsonian Archives hold 4,441 m3 of archival material.

The Smithsonian Institution has many categories of displays that can be visited at the museums. In 1912, First Lady Helen Herron Taft donated her inauguration gown to the museum to begin the First Ladies' Gown display, one of the Smithsonian's most popular exhibits.

The museum displays treasures such as the Star-Spangled Banner, the stove pipe hat that was worn by President Abraham Lincoln, the ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard Of Oz, and the original Teddy Bear that was named after President Theodore Roosevelt.

In 2016, the Smithsonian's Air & Space museum curators restored the large model Enterprise from the original Star Trek TV series.

The Institution publishes Smithsonian magazine monthly and Air & Space magazine bimonthly. Smithsonian was the result of Secretary of the Smithsonian S. Dillon Ripley asking the retired editor of Life magazine Edward K. Thompson to produce a magazine about things in which the Smithsonian Institution is interested, might be interested or ought to be interested. Another Secretary of the Smithsonian, Walter Boyne, founded Air & Space.

The Smithsonian Institute Press publishes books.

More information: Smithsonian Magazine

The Smithsonian museums are among this country's

most endearing treasures and I look forward to helping

maintain and enhance their coveted works of art.

Xavier Becerra