1st Edition

Smithsonian Stories Chronicle of a Golden Age, 1964-1984

408 Pages

by Routledge

408 Pages

by Routledge

408 Pages

by Routledge

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Description

Why is the Smithsonian more than the "Nation's Attic?" Or more than a museum complex? As Wilton S. Dillon shows, the Smithsonian came to be the institution we know today under the twenty-year leadership of "Sun King" S. Dillon Ripley. Ripley aspired to reinvent the Smithsonian as a great university—with museums. Although little understood by the public at large, it began as a basic research... Read more

Foreword by Robert D. Sullivan

Prologue

Part One Curtain Time, Stages, Characters

1 My Smithsonian Beginning
2 Man and Beast: Two Inquiries, 1969 and 1986
3 The Cultural Drama: Identity and Ferment
4 Our Simply Sensational Salon: The South Tower
5 Savants and Muses in the Castle

Part Two Enrichments

6 Our French Connection
7 Variations on Indian and Chinese Themes
8 Space Age on the Ground
9 Play and Inventiveness
10 New Generations at the Smithsonian

Part Three Interactions

11 Encountering the White House, Congress, and Judiciary
12 Owls and Falcons
13 Imagining a Museum of Humankind
14 Elizabeth Taylor and Mr. Smithson's Ghost
15 Linking Yves Klein and Marcel Mauss

Part Four Commemorations

16 Celebrating Copernicus
17 Whither "STEM" and the Liberal Arts?
18 Einstein Redux
19 Pax Americana: 1976
20 Edinburgh 1984: The Enduring Scottish Enlightenment

Acknowledgments and Epilogue

Appendices
A Harvest of Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge
Major Symposia and Participants

Index