Founded in 1846 and named for British scientist James Smithson, who had donated $508,318 to increase and diffuse knowledge in America. The largest museum complex in the world, most of its buildings cluster around the Washington mall. The Smithsonian includes sixteen museums in New York and the District of Columbia, as well as four field stations; the National Art Gallery is affiliated, with a separate board. Its collections encompass American art, space, natural history American history Asian art, African art, science and technology sculpture and associated themes of popular culture. The Smithsonian runs an African American history museum in Anacostia (Washington), the National Zoo and the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum in New York. The newest hall, to open in 2000, will be devoted to Native Americans, incorporating New York’s Museum of the American Indian.

All these museums are free to the public. The Smithsonian assembles important travelling exhibits as well, since less than 1 percent of the total collection can actually be exhibited at any time. It also has extensive educational outreach facilities. The Institution also constitutes an important center for advanced research, scholarship and publication through both its press and Smithsonian magazine. An independent agency its board includes the vice-president, chief justice of the Supreme Court, Congress members and citizens.

The Smithsonian, as America’s museum, often challenges the boundaries of what constitutes history and how it should be presented. It has added television memorabilia alongside the gowns of the First Ladies and taken American diversity into the mall in its Folklife Festivals. It was also caught in a bitter controversy in the late 1990s over how to present the reasoning behind and impacts of atomic devastation in Japan—the “Enola Gay” controversy—which remind us how complex the past can be for a contested present.