February 7th, 2002
Smithsonian Pluses and Minuses
New York Times
This has been a week of ups and downs for the Smithsonian Institution. On Monday, in its fiscal 2003 budget, the Bush administration proposed an additional $9 million for the Smithsonian, bringing its annual appropriation to a record $528 million. On the same day, Catherine Reynolds announced that she would withdraw the bulk of a $38 million gift offered to the Smithsonian last May, money that would have been used to create a hall of American achievement in the National Museum of American History. Writing to Lawrence Small, secretary of the Smithsonian, Ms. Reynolds said she had never dreamed that her plan would be so controversial.
In fact, Ms. Reynolds’s plan, which was to install a permanent tribute to individual American "achievers" like Martha Stewart, Dorothy Hamill and Steven Spielberg, was merely empty-headed. What was controversial were the terms of the plan, which would have granted her and her foundation inappropriate influence over curatorial decisions.
The retraction of this gift suggests how little, in the long run, Ms. Reynolds cares about the Smithsonian’s overall well-being. She was endowing only her own vision, whether it made sense for the Smithsonian or not. Ms. Reynolds was certainly entitled to make the offer, but the Smithsonian should never have accepted. Now that she has withdrawn most of her gift, Ms. Reynolds will undoubtedly find another venue in which to pay homage to people whose achievements our society abundantly honors already.
This episode is a perfect demonstration of the shortcomings of Secretary Small’s fund-raising. There is no doubt that the Smithsonian needs money, since it has a $1 billion construction backlog and receives only 70 percent of its operating budget from Congress. But it does not need money that diverts the institution from its core missions or handcuffs its curatorial independence in any way. The Reynolds gift would have done both. Nor should the Smithsonian raise money, as Mr. Small has done, in ways that turn parts of the institution into corporate billboards. No one questions Mr. Small’s energy, but given the compromises implicit in accepting the Reynolds gift there is reason to question his leadership.