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11 1 The Universal Museum Shaping Cultural Exhibition at the Smithsonian In the 1840s, the National Mall was a barren and unattractive stretch of land. Its most notable feature was the unusable Washington Canal that ran along its northern side to the Capitol before turning south toward the Anacostia River. Black and white Washingtonians knew it as the hub of the city’s slave trading operations, which were clustered along its southeastern edge and a short distance to the north at the Center Market. Since the 1790s, several influential people had hoped to transform the Mall into a more inviting space, but none had yet succeeded.1 Consequently, it was hardly the first location most observers would have thought of for the site of a world-class scientific and cultural research institution. London, the capital of the world’s most powerful empire, already had the British Museum. Founded in 1753, the museum was a center for research and served as a repository for books and manuscripts as well as natural history, antiquities, and ethnographic collections.2 Although Philadelphia had developed institutions with the potential of emulating the British Museum’s model, nothing approaching that great public institution yet existed in the United States.3 That was until an extraordinary bequest from English scientist James Smithson arrived with the stipulation that the young nation use his modest fortune “to found at Washington, under the name [of] the Smithsonian institution, an establishment for the increase & diffusion of Knowledge among men.”4 A pioneer in the field of chemistry, Smithson was well regarded throughout Europe in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries for his work analyzing the properties of geological samples. Belonging to a community of scientists that crossed national borders to collect materials and conduct research, he traveled widely in his lifetime. Persisting in scientific journeys even after war convulsed the continent, Smithson could not help but be caught up in the sweeping social and political transformations of the period. 12 CHAPTER 1 As an eyewitness to the wars the French Revolution precipitated, he saw both the promise and perils of that revolution. Given these experiences, as well as the fact that he was the illegitimate and ignored son of an English nobleman, his attitude toward republicanism was undoubtedly complex. His commitment to science, however, always remained steadfast. No one knows for sure why he chose to leave his fortune to the United States—a country he had never visited. Since most of his papers were destroyed in a fire at the Smithsonian in 1865 before being examined thoroughly, his personal and political thoughts, as well as many of his scientific discoveries, are lost. Nevertheless, he did leave the Smithsonian with a powerful and ambitious charge—“the increase and diffusion of knowledge”—and the resources to begin pursuing it.5 Defining what this phrase would mean in practice became the task of those who led the Smithsonian in its earliest years. Above all, it fell to the institution’s first secretary, Joseph Henry. Born in upstate New York in December 1797, Henry had become well known for his pioneering experiments and discoveries in electromagnetism. When he took charge of the Smithsonian in December 1846, he was a professor of natural philosophy (physics) from the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) who was accustomed to balancing heavy teaching, research, and administrative duties. Leading the fledgling Smithsonian, however, would prove a far greater challenge than his professorial career. Fortunately, he was not only an accomplished experimentalist, but also an enthusiastic champion of science, and he embraced Smithson’s charge with vigor. He envisioned an institution with grand ambitions and a nearly limitless reach. All subjects of human inquiry were fair game.6 Henry believed that the Smithsonian could best accomplish its goals of increasing and diffusing knowledge to all humankind by sponsoring research, distributing publications, and facilitating exchanges among international scientific institutions. Intriguingly, given the Smithsonian’s current identity as primarily a collection of museums, the first secretary opposed making a museum the focal point of the institution’s work. Some natural history and archeological collections to assist researchers were necessary, but nothing more. For Henry, a museum hindered the Smithsonian’s pursuit of its central aim. Museums, he argued, did little to increase knowledge; they were simply venues for popular education. Moreover, they served a local audience and therefore did not fulfill the Smithsonian’s purpose of benefiting all humankind through its work. To correspondents such as the natural historian Louis Agassiz and...

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