Smithsonian Stories: Chronicle of a Golden Age, 1964-1984
Jan 2015 · Transaction Publishers
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About this ebook
Why is the Smithsonian more than the âNationâs Attic?â 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 âSun Kingâ S. Dillon Ripley. Ripley aspired to reinvent the Smithsonian as a great universityâwith museums. Although little understood by the public at large, it began as a basic research center. The Smithsonian remains a key contributor to the world of higher learning and functions diplomatically as the ministry of culture for the United States. Dillon provides backstage insights into Ripleyâs quest for the wholeness of knowledge. He describes how he inspired its role as a âtheater of ideas as well as artifacts.â Under his tutelage, the National Mall became a playground for world intelligentsia, an âintellectual free trade zoneâ in the shadow of the nationâs political capital. Dillon reminds us that interdisciplinary, international Smithsonian symposia foreshadowed twenty-first-century issues and trends. His descriptions of the educational rewards of balancing tradition with the avant-garde are inspiring. As Dillon reminds us, Ripleyâs twenty-year reign may well have helped spark the waning embers of the Enlightenment.
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About the author
Wilton S. Dillon is former president of the Institute for Intercultural Studies (founded by Margaret Mead) at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and senior scholar emeritus at the Smithsonian Institution. His four Smithsonian decades drew upon earlier experience as a soldier, journalist, college teacher, foundation executive, and science diplomat. He is a graduate of University of California, Berkeley, and holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Columbia University. Additionally, he was honored by the French government with the Chevalier des arts et des lettres, in part, for his book Gifts and Nations.
Robert D. Sullivan has over forty years of museum experience. From 1990–2006, he served as the associate director for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
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