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44 2 History and Technology A New Museum, a New Era By the mid-twentieth century, the United States National Museum was, by all accounts, bursting at the seams, overcrowded with poorly maintained , inadequately lighted, and insufficiently labeled exhibits. Articles in newspapers and magazines consistently referred to the Smithsonian as the “Nation’s Attic.”1 It was an apt moniker as row upon row, case upon case of artifacts lined the walls of the institution’s buildings, giving them the look of a cluttered and musty attic. A new building, or buildings, Smithsonian officials argued, would provide the space to create exhibits suitable for the institution’s unparalleled collections and improve the effectiveness with which the Smithsonian educated its visitors.2 Ideas for three new museums—one dedicated to engineering and industry , another for history, and another to house the Smithsonian’s art collections—as well as a proposal to add wings to the Natural History Building started circulating at the Smithsonian in the years following World War I, and discussions about each continued into the post–World War II period. In the interwar years, none of these projects were successfully brought to fruition, although some did make headway. After World War II, however, the coffers opened and a scramble commenced as the proponents of each project competed to make theirs the institution’s priority. Still, getting a new museum built was not an easy task. It required deft management and skillful lobbying both on Capitol Hill and internally at the Smithsonian. In the Smithsonian’s bureaucracy, it was the secretary who provided the overarching vision for the institution, but it was often the assistant secretaries and a small number of influential curators who provided the innovative ideas and administrative know-how to accomplish big tasks. In Joseph Henry’s era, Spencer Baird and George Brown Goode were the key figures in the rise of the National Museum. In the mid-twentieth century, HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 45 a new cohort of skillful administrators would make even greater expansions possible. To accomplish their objectives, they needed to build support simultaneously among their Smithsonian colleagues and members of Congress, especially those who held key positions on committees such as the House and Senate’s committees on buildings and grounds. Without this combination of institutional and congressional support, no project could succeed. Those leaders who rallied both effectively, however, would usher in a new era of growth at the Smithsonian. Carl W. Mitman was the earliest of this new wave of visionary leaders , playing a driving role in two museum projects that would eventually develop into the Museum of History and Technology and the National Air and Space Museum. Although he saw neither project to fruition, he was the spark that inspired others, especially his successor Frank A. Taylor, to promote museums of science and technology at the Smithsonian. Mitman had received degrees from Lehigh and Princeton universities before coming to the United States National Museum as an aide in the Division of Mineral Technology in 1914. Over the course of two decades, he progressed to become curator of the division of mechanical technology and later head curator of the Department of Arts and Industries.3 From early in his tenure, Mitman was a strong advocate for a museum of engineering and industry at the Smithsonian. He initially proposed such a museum in 1919 and continued to press for one over the next two decades. Mitman pointed with frustration to the fact that England had the South Kensington Museum, France the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, and Germany the Deutsches Museum, but the United States, which was “the most advanced in the application of the engineering and mechanical arts,” lacked a museum dedicated to science and technology.4 He believed that the Smithsonian was the ideal place for such a museum, because the institution already possessed large technological collections and expertise in displaying them. In August 1922, Mitman addressed the leaders of the four national engineering societies—Civil, Mining, Electrical, and Mechanical—in New York and laid out his ideas for the museum, and they subsequently formed a corporation to promote a National Museum of Engineering and Industry.5 The corporation’s plan called for a museum that would be “The Greatest Industrial Museum for the First Industrial Nation,” housing “thousands of valuable relics and inventions ” from both government and private collections. Ambitious in their vision, they imagined the museum as a hub for a network of museums [18.221.41...

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