MR.
SUAREZ: We're going to move directly onto
the next item in the program.
We are honored to have with us the Secretary
of the Smithsonian Institution, Wayne Clough.
[Applause]
WAYNE CLOUGH: Thank you Ray.
Thanks all of you for coming today, and taking
part in this important discussion with us.
I really enjoyed that panel discussion.
As Secretary of the Smithsonian I do get a
fair amount of mail every day, and quite a
few of the folks who send me mail actually
express some of the
sentiments we were just hearing, why am I
not represented in the Smithsonian?
In deference to my distinguished colleagues
here, who represent an important part of our
world, a number of those letters come from
people called women.
[Laughter]
MR.
CLOUGH: There is this question for us, particularly
at the Smithsonian, is how do we reflect the
Americans as a whole?
Those are wonderful questions as we heard,
and I want to speak to that, and give you
some thoughts that we have on that.
Not that we have all the answers.
Hopefully we can develop them together.
It's particularly great to be here in this
museum with it's great director Kevin Gover
who has given me the opportunity to participate
in a number of ceremonies here in this museum,
which are always very inspiring.
Not long ago I came here to help him unveil
that totem
pole that's out there in the Potomac atrium.
It was a fantastic demonstration of native
art and storytelling by David Boxley and his
family who finished the piece right
here in front of our delighted visitors.
They did it in a way, incidentally, your discussion
about the negative side of the story and the
positive side of the story, for many years,
probably 100 years, his tribe was prevented
from actually carving totem poles.
This was a celebration of the art and the
storytelling that we have restored.
It was my pleasure, actually, to meet David
two years ago where he and his family performed
native dances in the opening of the first
peoples Alaska exhibition in the Smithsonian
arctic study center located in the new wing
of the Anchorage Museum.
I would encourage you to go there, it's a
fantastic exhibition.
The Smithsonian worked with elders of the
clans there to choose 600 of our artifacts
from the Natural History Museum and from this
museum to create that exhibition.
It is now on a long-term loan.
It's a great
educational resource, not for just those who
visit Anchorage and that museum, but for the
Native Americans who live there themselves.
Now, back here in Washington, of course, hundreds
of people were in this museum when that totem
pole was unveiled.
We brought the ceremony using a live webcast
to David's village in Alaska.
In a heartbeat we
had, in a way, bridged the span of an entire
country from one coast to another, from one
generation to another, and from one culture
to another.
This is one example, as Konrad was saying
where technology can help us use modern resources
to achieve our goal of what we call reaching
new audiences.
By using the latest technology we can bring
information about all Americans to every American.
We understand that just building a great technological
platform to physically do that doesn't mean
that we know how to tell
the story.
That's a whole different ballgame, and that's
what museums are all about.
We're trying to learn, and we will take any
advice that we can get along the way.
This symposium provides an avenue for discussing
and debating important questions, questions
for our nation, it's museums, and especially
for this great institution, the Smithsonian.
I do want to thank our colleague Richard Kurin
and others who worked in putting this program
together, and for all our participants who
have been with us in our audience.
Of course, I'd like to especially thank our
Smithsonian Regent who was here, Xavier Bacerra,
for being with us.
He is our conscious on the Smithsonian Governance
Board on so
many issues.
I think it's reasonable to ask all of us here,
why are we holding this symposium, and why
now?
Let me try to answer these questions at least
from the Smithsonian point
of view, or my point of view.
When Richard Kurin and Claudene Brown, our
Assistant Secretary for Education and I first
began to discuss this idea, it struck me as
particularly important for the Smithsonian
as we seek to chart a new course of this venerable
and magnificent institution.
In 2010 we adopted a new strategic plan that
was developed
in a new way for the Smithsonian.
1,500 people participated in developing that
plan, including people who were not in the
Smithsonian community.
By federal government rules we were required
to consider the next five years, but we emboldened
ourselves and looked out 50 years and 500
years, and even 1,000 years.
If we're lucky, this
institution like many great institutions in
the world will be here 1,000 years from now.
We try to consider these key megatrends, you
can't predict the future, but just to
get a sense of it.
Clearly the changing ethnicity of our nation,
which is rapidly moving towards a population
where there is no majority, was one of those
clear factors.
We concluded that the Smithsonian truly, in
the future, wanted to be a national museum.
We had to recognize that much of the necessary
preparation for that role
has not been done.
We have a lot of work to do to even get close,
so that meant changing the nature of our collections,
becoming more inclusive in our viewpoints
and the way we expressed ourselves through
our exhibitions, and walking the walk in all
of our daily activities.
The 1,500 people involved in this planning
process came to agreement on
four grand challenges that should drive our
future.
Two of which recall understand the American
experience and valuing world cultures, because
so much of what we
do in this country is derived from other cultures.
Both of these really relate to the matter
of how cultural and ethnic differences shape
who we are, and how they play out in the context
of being an American.
We also agree that through new approaches
to our museum exhibitions using digital technology
we would do our best to reach new audiences
and
broaden access.
Eduardo said many of the members of the Latino
community simply don't come here, and that's
a shame.
We have to reach them.
I grew up in the Deep South, and kids in the
Deep South typically haven't come to the Smithsonian
either, poor kids like my family.
Latino kids in East Los Angeles, or Native
American kids in a small village in Alaska
don't think of us.
Our goal is to offer learning experiences
to help them mature and broaden their horizons.
This is an ambitious agenda.
This is one of the selfish
reasons we convene this meeting, is to learn
from leaders and from those of you participating
in the audience about how to do this.
We don't know all the answers.
As to the matter of why it's important to
do this meeting now, I would argue this is
a critical time for museums to take on a larger
role in our society.
Never before has society needed our content
so
much.
Never before has there been such an opportunity
to deliver it outside of the walls of our
museum as well as inside.
Schools and teachers are crying out for our
help.
We need to step up to this challenge now,
I would say, because if we don't our nation
will be lesser for it.
We'll have missed a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Thanks to all of you
who have participated in this meeting today.
I'd like to use the remainder of my remarks
to speak to what we're trying to do at the
Smithsonian to implement the vision of our
strategic
plan, but I think first I'd like to make just
a couple of comments about why it's important
to me personally.
I grew up in the Deep South.
It was a segregated time.
I attended Georgia Institute of Technology
for my undergraduate studies in the early
60s.
Fortunately in my freshman year that university
took it on itself to desegregate voluntarily
and get on
with it.
In fact, aggressively recruit African Americans
into the student body.
It shows you what one institution can do,
because these actions quickly changed that
institution for the better.
Today it graduates the largest number of African
American engineers and many science disciplines
in the country.
Georgia Tech grew by taking on a
leadership role in offering educational opportunity
to all cultural and ethnic groups.
Today, incidentally, it is a very diverse
campus.
The campus, of course, is in
the heart of Atlanta in the city.
It's elected representative did something
very smart, they embraced Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr. and his movement.
They even adopted a nickname, the city too
busy to hate.
There's no question that Atlanta grew to be
a great city simply because it embraced diversity,
it took that opportunity to do it.
Some of my
heroes while I was at Georgia Tech were John
Lewis and Andrew Young, men who later became
my friends.
I saw up close what Lonnie Bunch says more
eloquently than me, that the Civil Rights
Movement was not just about finding equality
for African Americans, but about changing
our nation for the better so it lived up to
its ideals.
Now, as a young man,
I also had the great opportunity and privilege
to go to UC Berkley for my Ph.D. studies in
the late 60s.
It was an active campus at that time.
[Laughter]
MR.
CLOUGH: I learned a lot in a lot of ways.
I encountered a campus for the first time
where Asian Americans composed a large portion
of the student body.
In fact, were on the way to becoming the majority
of the student body.
It was there I really realized that diversity
is a bigger thing than what I had perceived
it to be in my childhood.
Later in my life
in my opportunities to teach on the West Coast
at Stanford I became aware of the important
work of Berkley Professor Ron Takaki who I
had the good fortune to meet when I was teaching
there.
A prolific author and influential historian,
his book A Different Mirror expanded a story
of American history to include the entire
immigrant story.
In his view,
and I think you've discussed this, American
history had been written into a master narrative
that shut out the accomplishments of non-Europeans,
and too often that has been true in
the ethic that was built into our universities
and indeed our museums, and probably we could
say the Smithsonian.
As Takaki reminded us, the people who had
typically been omitted from the history books
(and still are to some extent) had minds,
wills, and voices, and lives that needed to
be remembered.
He advocated that approach for
acknowledging that every story is important
to the American mosaic.
He personally broadened my understanding of
what it meant to be an American, and it made
it more meaningful for me when I understood
that.
These experiences underline my commitment
to cultural ethnic diversity at the Smithsonian.
The Smithsonian's strategic plan calls for
us to build
from the ground up, but to try to work (how
we call it in engineering terms) in parallel
so that we don’t wait for one activity to
be over to have to accomplish another, that's
the problem that plagues institutions.
How do you move quickly when you have major
work to do?
We're making progress, and I'll tell you it's
made much easier for me, because I'm surrounded
by people who are committed to this subject.
Now, I don't want to describe all the efforts
we're making, they're pervasive, but I'm going
to give you
just a few highlights.
Of course, you can start right here with the
work of this museum, which tells a story of
the people who lived on this land before the
Europeans arrived, and how the story evolved
and changed in many ways tragically after
Europeans came.
Kevin and his colleagues are telling these
compelling stories in ways that speak
directly to some of the truths we need to
hear.
At the same time, they're informing all of
us about cultures that brought enlightenment
to all the world.
Then there's our
commitment to build the African American History
and Culture Museum for 500 million dollars.
This is a lifelong dream of many Americans,
and it's a real big challenge for the Smithsonian
to raise that kind of money and do the work
that's necessary.
We're raising half the cost of the work, and
we're hoping the federal government will,
in fact,
give us the other half.
We're truly fortunate, of course, to have
Lonnie Bunch as our director.
He's doing herculean work to make this come
true, and recently we experienced the magnificence
of the groundbreaking for that museum.
It was an honor to be there with President
Obama and First Lady, and Congressman John
Lewis who said the museum was a
validation of the dreams of generations.
He was speaking, of course, for millions of
people around the country, and I can tell
you there wasn't a dry eye in the house.
Of
course, you've read and heard the proposal
of the American Latino commission which was
authorized initially by President Bush, and
subsequently endorsed by President Obama,
calling for the creation of the Smithsonian
American Latino Museum.
Our position on this proposal is that it's
up to congress to authorize any such major
undertaking, but if they choose this course,
we would be honored to undertake the challenge.
Of course, we hope they will provide the needed
appropriations to make it happen.
[Laughter]
MR.
CLOUGH: Beyond new museums though, you can
see our plan unfolding in the way we're broadening
our exhibitions, and there are really
I would say two ways that we're doing that.
One is exhibitions that are directly addressed
to particular topics, and others where, as
Lonnie said, we're building in a larger
viewpoint in our conventional presentation.
The art of the Gorman [phonetic] by the Smithsonian
American Art Museum was about the internment
camps, and the Japanese who made art with
nothing fundamentally.
It was very moving.
Bittersweet Harvest, the Bracero Program developed
by the National Museum of American History
and are
traveling exhibition services sites.
It was first exhibited in American history
to great response to that, and now has proven
the most popular traveling exhibition we've
ever had.
We've had to duplicate it several times over
to meet the demand.
The Black List at the National Portrait Gallery,
an exhibition of portraits of African Americans
from all walks
of life was just concluded.
The Portrait Gallery, I think, was mentioned,
just collaborated with the Smithsonian Asian
Pacific American Program, as Konrad said to
create a
wonderful exhibition, Asian American portraits
of encounter.
There are others, slavery at Jefferson Monticello,
the Paradox of Liberty that Lonnie described.
That was a challenge to tell that story in
a way, to engage people in the topic.
To give the slaves who lived at Monticello
a human life just as Jefferson had one, a
human dimension.
We're seeking, also, to expand and enhance
the work of Eduardo Diaz and Konrad Ng and
those two programs that are essential to our
future, to help us continue to tell the stories
as Ron Takaki said they should be told.
Also related to this, and Eduardo referred
to it as well, this is an initiative Richard
Kurin is to hire curators (and we are underway,
we
have the searches going) who come at their
work from perspectives of different cultural
viewpoints.
Beyond the boundaries of our national mall
museums, we have other assets
that are engaged in building this larger narrative
about America.
Music binds us in ways that help broaden our
appreciation of many cultures, and our Smithsonian
Jazz Masterworks Orchestra has performed,
indeed, all over the world.
Music can be flat out fun.
Last summer, the Folk Life festival featured
rhythm and blues, and the place was
rocking.
It was an educational experience for everybody
who came there.
Other assets, I mentioned the traveling exhibit
services that has traveling exhibits in all
50 states.
We have 171 museums in our affiliate's museum,
many of which are culturally specific museums.
I've taken it on myself to try to visit as
many of those as I can.
I can tell
you it's very moving.
I was just recently at the National Mexican
Museum in Chicago.
Carlos is going to be on the next panel.
It was a fabulous museum.
What resources
these museums are for their communities.
We need to work with them and find ways to
let them help us.
Finally, I would mention a subject that I
think is quite pertinent to some of the questions
that were asked towards the end of the session.
The larger - - institutional initiatives that
cross over the different museums at the
Smithsonian and help us develop what we call
our consortia efforts and our educational
program.
An example of the cross disciplinary approach
is a new initiative called Americans All [phonetic].
This is an effort of Claudine Brown and Michelle
Delaney who chairs our coalition consortium
on the American Experience.
It brings together a number of museums
and research centers to document and interpret
the history and culture of immigration and
migration in the United States.
We partner with organizations like Ellis Island
Foundation, the Angel Island Foundation, and
universities and museums to build the core
resources that we will need to do this major
work.
We will use social media so people (as Lonnie
was describing for his museum) can tell us
their stories and that will form one of the
core resources for the research, the exhibitions,
and the educational
materials that we will develop to try to tell
this larger narrative about our country.
Education is one of our Smithsonian's most
important missions as well.
We created the office of Assistant Secretary
of Education for the first time at the Smithsonian
under the directorship of Claudine Brown,
who you'll hear from later.
We wanted to create a robust base for
education that spans all of the Smithsonian,
and we have been fortunate to receive a 30
million dollar endowment from the Gates Foundation
to fuel the work to reach
new audiences and broaden access.
Under Claudine's leadership we now have over
20 funded cross-disciplinary programs, across
our museums and reaching outside of our museum
to develop education programs that we never
had before, and deliver them to audiences
we've not done before.
We are working with partners to scale our
work.
We simply don't
have the capacity.
We don't have the money or the capacity to
scale our work, so we're working with an organization
called ePals, who's been a great partner for
us, to give us access to 700,000 schools all
over the world.
In the course of last year alone, over 70,000
downloads were made by teachers of Smithsonian
content.
There are bigger numbers
out there, but three years ago that number
would have been 0.
We're now reaching 70,000 teachers.
Three years ago we weren't reaching those
teachers.
This tells you just how
fast that is changing.
Social media, of course, is opening new doors
as well.
We have over 500 or 600 social media sites
now at the Smithsonian.
I'm told we have 2 million Twitter and Facebook
followers.
I thought that was a big number until I read
the newspaper the other day and Lady Gaga
has 22 million.
[Laughter]
MR.
CLOUGH: We know we have work to do.
She set the bar up high.
[Laughter]
MR.
CLOGUH: When our newest resident arrived at
the Steven Udvar-Hazy Center last week, the
space shuttle Discovery, enthusiastic fans
joined with us in celebration of this magnificent
event.
Facebook and Instagram went kind of crazy.
In
just the first 24 hours, over 10 million people
were engaged in sharing celebration of the
arrival of this amazing space craft that had
flown 148 million miles.
I was on a
dais with Charles Bolden, the first African
American to permanently head NASA and Eileen
Collins, the first female to command a space
shuttle.
It occurred to me how diverse the people were
behind the shuttle program, and how we can
use the discover to tell the story of diversity
and it's contributions to our country.
In 2002, the first
member of a Native American tribe orbited
the earth, Chickasaw Nation Astronaut John
Herrington.
On his historic flight he took with him a
number of items, a flute, eagle feathers,
and a Hopi ceramic pot.
Now those items are part of the collections
here in American Indian, symbolizing the myriad
of collections between art, science, history,
and
culture.
Between creativity, diversity, and innovation,
between the earth, the sun, and the skies.
We believe the Smithsonian can spark excitement
and inspiration to
learners of all ages, whether with totem poles,
pots, or space craft.
And whether to decide to become the next artist
like Davis Boxley [phonetic] or the next NASA
administrator who is one of our African American
heroes, or go anywhere their dreams take up
in flight, we're committed to doing it.
We have a long way to do, and we look
forward to your help as we try to accomplish
it.
Thank you very much for inviting me.
[Applause]
