Acadia N.P. i Museum Development the See also NPS : 1915-20 bug + Early year These files A MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY IS NEEDED IN ACADIA NATIONAL PARK Nature-guide work began in Acadia National Park in June, 1932, with the temporary 3-month's appointment of a ranger-naturalist. That summer his headquarters were in the rear room of the Acadia National Park Information Office. Since the ranger-naturalist was too busy with a new and intensive summer program of guided field trips and lectures there was no time for collecting natural history speci- mens, but even so the room designated as his headquarters was inadequate. Secretarial work, writing and mimeographing the "Nature Notes" publication and programs, painting of posters and announce- ments, frequently receiving visitors to the National Park, - for all these and for other duties the place allotted was not a satisfactory one. The ranger-naturalist was recalled on May 1, 1933. The nature-guide work was placed on a permanent basis in Acadia National Park with the establishment of the new Junior Park Naturalist position in the summer of 1933. Aside from planning for and conduct- ing the intensive summer program the naturalist had time to make collections of the local flora, fauna, and geology and to interview prospective donors of desirable natural history specimens. The material accumulated, equipment to take care of it was added, and the need for a more satisfactory location to serve as an office, storage room, and work shop became acute. Late in November, 1933, through the influence exerted and the interest manifested by Supt. George B. Dorr, the park naturalist's 2 headquarters were moved to a larger room in the basement of the Jesup Memorial Library in Bar Harbor. Although less conveniently located, the room was far more comfortable. Nevertheless at the time of moving into the new quarters only about one-half the equipment and specimens could be housed in the new room. Since that time the number of specimens, books, periodicals, items of office furniture, and amount of equipment has increased to such an extent that space in four or five buildings is utilized for its housing. Two of the buildings hich material has been stored are not under the control of Acadia National Park while only one is fireproof. All these buildings are inadequate from various standpoints - location, temperatures, humidity, light, and others. The storage of very valuable specimens in such places would be quite out of the question. Some of the larger specimens now on hand include: 14 large mounted birds 5 mounted mammals 1 very large mounted fish 100 skulls of various mammals 300 jars of preserved mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fishes, and marine invertebrates 26 sets of antlers (deer and moose) 2 large mounted lobsters Boxes of geological, entomological, archeological, botanical, and other specimens Some of the larger items of equipment include: 4 relief models of Acadia National Park - each measuring 5 ft. X 7 ft. 10 glass-faced exhibit stands 2 large specimen cabinets 1 desk 1 filing case 1 book case 3 1100 metal nature-trail signs 3 large flower-exhibit stands 1 large exhibit table 1 typewriter and table 1 mimeograph machine and table 130 flower pots and saucers 2 large framed Audubon prints - loaned by Mr. Dorr 500 books loaned by Mr. Dorr and Mr. Stupks Boxes containing museum bottles, traps, office supplies, bulletins, and miscellaneous equipment. Many items of equipment have been requested while museum specimens are constantly being added. Very valuable and extensive collections of natural history objects which have local significance might be acquired if the persons possessing them were to be assured that their donation would be given proper housing and proper care. Unlike some eastern states, Maine has not been exploited by institutions and individuals who seek collected and preserved natural history material for their own collections. Con- sequently much of great worth might be secured by a museum located in this National Park. A museum located here would be visited by many thousands of tourists each year. It would serve to instruct and orient the public who, after visiting it would go away with a far greater understanding of this seacoast National Park. The questions which are asked by the visiting multitudes time and again would be answered in a museum. Only a fraction of this multitude can ever be reached by the nature- guide staff. A museum would serve to invite and to provide room and equipment for biologists and geologists whose research would benefit the park 4 immeasurably. At present the park can derive no such benefit from capable and willing outside sources. A museum would centralize the various nature-guide services. Under the same roof where specimens would be on exhibit there would be the offices of the park naturalist and his staff, the laboratory, storage rooms, library, lecture hall, photographic dark room, etc. Here also various out-door exhibits such as tide pool display, wildflower exhibits, nature trail, etc. might be concentrated. Provided these people can find our present so-called museum, the visitors who have been to the museums in our western National Parks cannot help but be disappointed with the present museum situation in Acadia National Park. Whereas a national park museum should be so situated, constructed, equipped, and the exhibits so arranged as to impart the very essence of the wonderful area which it represents, the present nature-guide headquarters is entirely inadequate. Respectfully submitted, Arthur Stupka Park Naturalist January 16, 1935 Run Here's a copy of a 1, you may find interesting. -Join U.S.Dept.Interior Fib. 6:50 MUSEUM CURATORSHIP IN THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE 1904-1982 Ralph H. Lewis Department of the Interior National Park Service Curatorial Services Division Washington, D.C. 1993 Note: See Abbe Meegeonfile. vii PREFACE Museums have played vital roles in interpreting park resources and themes to the public. Like museums elsewhere, park museums are defined largely by the work of curators. Curators gather and care for collections of objects, record and study them, and use them in exhibits and other interpretive media. In the national parks work of this kind went on for years before any staff member received the title of curator, and many people with other titles-superintendents, rangers, naturalists, historians, archeologists, and clerical and custodial workers-still do such work. Conservators, museum registrars, exhibit designers, preparators, and technicians regularly collaborate with curators as different sorts of museum specialists. They are all part of curatorship to the extent that they help acquire, take care of, or use museum specimens. They have created much of the history in the pages that follow. Arthur C. Allen conceived and initiated this study while chief of the Division of Museum Services at the National Park Service's Harpers Ferry Center. He hoped that a more complete picture of how curatorial work had developed in the Park Service might clarify long-standing problems his division faced. Ten months, he thought, should suffice for someone familiar with the background of the museum program to search out and compile a trustworthy digest of the facts. A purchase order dated August 3, 1978, outlined the project's proposed scope and provided for incidental expenses the research might entail. This writer promptly began work, but the sources proved much more voluminous and scattered than anticipated. Although the study gathered material Allen found useful, research and writing were far from complete when he transferred from the museum program to the Blue Ridge Parkway in 1983. Chief Curator Ann Hitchcock, who inherited the curatorial problems in acute form upon her appointment in 1980, encour- aged continuation of the project. It became apparent early that a review limited to curatorial matters in a narrow sense would fail to place them adequately in context. The curatorial imperatives had been SO closely interwoven into the whole fabric of museum work in the parks that they resisted proper analysis in isolation. Consequently, this study first traces growth of the museum program as a whole. The first five chapters chronicle museum development in the national parks from the earliest park museums to 1982. The sixth chapter examines the distinctive development of furnished historic structure museums in the parks. The last three chapters focus more sharply on the curatorial aspects of park museums: the collections, their management, and their care. viii PREFACE The National Park Service History Collection in the Harpers Ferry Center Library was the principal source of data used in this study. What usefulness the resulting document has owes much to those responsible for the collection: David H. Wallace as the initiator, Richard W. Russell as its first curator, Ruthanne Heriot as special collection librarian, and David Nathanson as chief of HFC's Branch of Library, Archives, and Graphics Research. Nathanson's knowledge of the collection and its organization and his sustained professional helpfulness toward its use were reflected in the effective cooperation received from his staff, especially library technician Nancy Lee Potts and secretaries Beverley Foltz and Susan Myers. Richard Russell made an additional important contribution by giving the writer access to diaries of his father, Carl P. Russell, and letters between his father and mother concerning day-to-day developments during critical formative periods of the Park Service museum program. These manuscripts valuably supplemented the carefully preserved and organized Carl Parcher Russell Papers in the archives of the Washington State University Library at Pullman. The writer acknowledges effective assistance from the chief of the library's Manuscripts-Archives Division in consulting this collection also. Chief Curator Ann Hitchcock supported work on the study in numerous ways. She permitted continued use of office facilities, opened Curatorial Services Division files, reviewed drafts, and made many constructive suggestions. Members of her staff, especially Anthony M. Knapp, were also supportive. Art Allen and Thomas Vaughan took active interest in the project as long as they remained at Harpers Ferry and continued to review chapter drafts and provide helpful comments after moving to new responsi- bilities. In the division's Harpers Ferry unit all the staff curators including Richard Borges, Gordon Gay, Anne Jordan, Diana Pardue, and Suzanne Schell as well as museum specialist Donald Cumberland supplied needed data or offered leads in answer to the writer's frequent questions. In later stages John Hunter helped surmount technical difficulties. Staff curator Kathleen Triggs Byrne helped especially in accessing National Catalog and clearinghouse details. Carolyn Moler, unit secretary, provided essential assistance both informational and technical, and her well-kept files were an important source of data. Clerk-typists Doris Basch and Anna Petry ably supplemented her technical help. Harpers Ferry Center staff members aided the project on numerous occasions. Personnel officer Shirley H. Caniford and her staff, including Marilyn Longerbeam and Carolyn West, filled in employment dates for several significant museum workers whose records were incomplete in other sources. The personnel staff also supplied information on classification standards for Park Service museum positions. Sarah M. Olson, chief of the Division of Historic Furnishings, and David Wallace helpfully reviewed the ix chapter on furnished historic structure museums and opened the Vera Craig files. John Demer as chief, Division of Conservation, provided access to his division's files while conservators Gregory Byrne, Thomas Carter, Toby Raphael, Daniel Riss, Barclay Rogers, and Ronald Sheetz filled information gaps for the final chapter. Dan Riss also helped locate references in the division library and called items of potential relevance to the writer's attention. Exhibits specialist Olin Nave verified some needed data. HFC kindly granted permission to consult the transcript of an interview of Dr. and Mrs. Jean C. Harrington by Charles B. Hosmer, Jr. Among present and former field staff who took pains to answer queries and supply information, the writer is especially grateful to regional curator Jonathan W. Bayless; collections manager Barbara L. Beroza, Yosemite National Park; supervisory museum curator Allen S. Bohnert, Southeast Archeological Center; museum curator Susan J. Buchel, Nez Perce National Historical Park; park naturalist Richard Burns, Sequoia National Park; Robert C. Heyder, superintendent of Mesa Verde National Park; Louise Hinchliffe, Grand Canyon National Park's librarian; Richard Howard, chief of interpretation and resource management, and John M. Andresen, ranger, at Casa Grande Ruins National Monument; museum specialist Kathleen L. Manscill, Great Smoky Mountains National Park; supervisory park ranger Betty McSwain, Pipestone National Monument; Betty C. Monkman, associate curator at the White House; Franklin G. Smith, superintendent of Chamizal National Memorial; Jack Smith of Mesa Verde National Park; Roy W. Weaver, superintendent of Nez Perce National Historical Park; regional curator Pamela B. West, and Peter S. White, University of North Carolina. Additional help was received from Virginia L. Cummings and her colleagues at the Buffalo Museum of Science. National Park Service bureau historian Barry Mackintosh provided advice and encouragement as he reviewed and edited chapter drafts. For assistance in obtaining illustrations we thank Thomas A. DuRant, curator of the NPS historic photographic collections; Ray Bowers, Carnegie Institution of Washington; Henry Lie, Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, Harvard University Art Museums; Martha L. Mitchell, Brown University archivist; and Eliza- beth L. Robins, registrar, Buffalo Museum of Science. Staff curator Elizabeth M. Browning prepared the comprehensive index. Dorothy L. Lewis not only reviewed critically the study in all stages of the draft but also endured without complaint the demands on disposable time made by the project through more than a decade. CHAPTER ONE 1 MUSEUM BEGINNINGS IN THE NATIONAL PARKS Park museums did not grow from a single root, nor did any central authority decree their initial establishment. The first ones developed independently, created by local initiative to meet perceived needs. They could have received little stimulus through the rudimentary channels of communication that existed among the parks before creation of the National Park Service in 1916. Early park employees had two primary duties that have remained fundamental: protecting park resources and serving park visitors. Many visitors were eager to learn and asked questions, often ones lacking ready answers. Staff members responded to this lively interest as best they could. Some of them did SO in part by collecting, identifying, labeling, and exhibiting pertinent specimens. The people who undertook these curatorial tasks in addition to their regular duties carried on to some extent-perhaps with little intention-the behind-the-scenes museum functions of recording and preserving park resources. It soon became apparent that the more visitors understood about these resources, the more interested they were in protecting them. This observation added momentum to museum develop- ment in the parks. Perhaps none of those who started the first park museums had worked in museums previously. But museums were part of the intellectual climate in which they lived. During the first quarter of the twentieth century museum scientists visited most of the national parks and many of the national monuments to collect specimens and data. Park workers were influenced both by these contacts and by public interest in what museums were doing. Park museums did not sprout up in a cultural vacuum. They were engendered by a variety of outside factors, which led to three distinct lines of progression. The first to be considered took place in natural resource parks. Natural Parks On September 10, 1904, Major John Bigelow, Jr., of the 9th U.S. Cavalry, acting superintendent of Yosemite National Park, issued his General Orders No. 46 establishing an arboretum in the park. 1 An arboretum is a form of museum, making this among the first museums in any national park/Setting aside between 75 and one hundred acres near the Wawona Hotel, Bigelow detailed the detachment surgeon, Lieutenant Henry F. Pipes, to lay out trails, label samples of the various species of trees and flowers with their common and scientific names, transplant to the arboretum specimens of 2 MUSEUM BEGINNINGS IN THE NATIONAL PARKS other interesting plants found in the park, and protect the area from misuse. He also instructed civilian rangers to collect plants from elsewhere in the park and to look after the arboretum during the winter while the troops were gone. Pipes cleared the paths, equipped them with signposts and benches, and labeled 36 species of plants on one-inch planks painted khaki and nailed to trees or posts. Time permitted moving in only one transplant. When the arboretum elicited an inquiry from the Department of the Interior, Bigelow justified it by stating that an important purpose of the park was "to provide a great museum of nature for the public free of cost." This concept of the park itself as a museum is a significant and recurring one. He went on to express his hope that the arboretum would "some day be supplemented by a building serving the purpose of a museum and library."2 Bigelow retired from the Army at the end of the 1904 season. He commended the arboretum to his successor, Captain Harry C. Benson of the 4th Cavalry, but circumstances prevented its continued development. In 1905-06 a boundary change removed the acreage containing the arboretum from the park and California retroceded Yosemite Valley to the federal government, making it the park's centerpiece. The arboretum was almost completely forgotten. After 47 years of total neglect a park ranger retraced the overgrown paths and located eight of the original labels still in place and faintly legible. 3 Museum development in Yosemite did not wait that long to resume. In 1914 the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, founded in 1908 at the University of California in Berkeley, began a study of the mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians of the Yosemite region. Field work for the study continued until August 1920 with one or more expeditions each year except in wartime. Museum staff spent 957 man-days collecting 2,001 pages of field notes and 4,354 specimens, preserving both in the museum as an invaluable record of park resources.)Yosemite's staff not only helped with logistics but added useful observations and specimens. Joseph Grinnell, director of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology and leader of the Yosemite study, was a museologist and teacher as well as zoologist. 5 He and his field workers significantly increased local awareness of museum policies, practices, and opportunities. Stephen T. Mather, busy with the creation of a national park service, became SO interested that he contributed personally toward the costs of field studies. 6 Grinnell's influence fostered the creation of a museum of sorts in the park in 1915. A number of mounted birds and mammals, and apparently some pressed plants accompanied by watercolor sketches, were exhibited in the crowded headquarters building, which also contained a newly established informa- tion bureau, Because Grinnell taught that "people instinctively want to know the names of things," each specimen probably had its label.7 CHAPTER ONE 3 Park ranger Forest S. Townsley contributed at least some of the mounted animals. After previous service in Platt National Park, he joined the small ranger staff at Yosemite in 1913, became chief ranger in 1916, and held this position until his death in 1943. Taxidermy was his hobby. He probably taught himself with the aid of one or more of the excellent handbooks by museum taxidermists that had sold widely since the 1890s. No doubt his contacts with Grinnell and other field workers from the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology helped to intensify his interest and refine his technique. If Townsley had a key part in starting the little museum at headquar- ters, he received reinforcement with the appointment of Ansel F. Hall as information ranger in 1919. 8 Conditions then favored museum growth. The National Park Service had begun to function under a policy letter Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane sent Director Mather on May 13, 1918. "The educational, as well as the recreational, use of the national parks " should be encouraged in every practicable way it stated in part. "Museums containing specimens of wild flowers, shrubs, and trees and mounted animals, birds, and fish native to the parks and other exhibits of this character, will be established as authorized. "9 This basic statement also contained the germ of future accession policies limiting the scope of park museum collections. Mather himself was seizing upon curatorial measures in his vigorous campaign to build public support for the national parks As a feature of the Fourth National Park Conference in January 1917 he arranged for a special exhibition at the Smithsonian's National Museum. Forty-five paintings of park scenes by such artists as Bierstadt, Leigh, Moran, Rungius, and Twachtman were hung for the opening reception> Most remained on public display until after President Woodrow Wilson's second inauguration in March. During the same fiscal year Mather launched an experimental traveling exhibition intended for display in libraries. It consisted of 24 framed photographs of park scenery packed in two reusable shipping boxes. Its continuing popularity led the director to request funds to produce and circulate additional sets. 10 Mather's early annual reports contained enthusiastic references to museum developments in the parks For Yosemite he proposed to include ample museum space in the new administration building he was asking Congress to finance. His 1919 report announced establishment of a National Parks Educational Committee chaired by the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Its objectives included active promotion of the idea that the national parks are "museums of Nature in her supreme manifestations," an echo of Major Bigelow's concept "One of the most important matters to receive earnest consideration is the early establishment of adequate museums in every one of our parks in which comprehensive exhibits of the 4 MUSEUM BEGINNINGS IN THE NATIONAL PARKS flora and fauna, and perhaps the minerals of the region, can be placed," Mather declared in his 1920 report. 11 Undergirding such internal factors favorable to park museum develop- ment was an external one. The American public was on the verge of a decade of heightened interest in natural history. The nature study move- ment, which had been growing since the 1890s, was approaching its harvest time. Excitement over the evolution controversy was also building toward a climax. Many of the visitors who stopped at the Yosemite information bureau in 1919 came with curiosity about the plants, animals, and geologic history of the park already aroused. 12 Ansel Hall probably spent most of his first summer at Yosemite on duty in the information bureau. If so, he helped register 18,000 campers and answer questions from an estimated ninety percent of other park visitors. He was well placed to observe their interests and their reactions to the natural history specimens on exhibit. The next summer, the new nature guide service under Harold C. Bryant and Loye H. Miller generated more visitor questions about natural history. Enid Michael, wife of the Yosemite postmaster and an able botanist, maintained a large display of cut wild flowers at the entrance to headquarters. "So great was the interest in the flower show started last year that it was continued throughout the winter," the 1921 Park Service report stated. "Many have spent hours, notebook in hand, studying the exhibits."13 In 1920 Yosemite could foresee more space for its cramped museum. It would not have to wait on the long chance that Congress might appropri- ate the funds requested for a new headquarters building big enough to contain the exhibits Director Mather had decided to have built at his own expense a rangers' clubhouse, which would be completed that fall. Then the bachelor rangers, presumably including Hall, could leave the old structure that served as their quarters and mess. It had been built about 1899 by Chris Jorgensen, a successful California artist, as a rustic home and studio. With moderate alteration the well-sited building could house the museum. That September Superintendent Washington B. Lewis authorized Hall to proceed with preparations. The assignment did not include an appreciable budget, and Hall had to beg, borrow, and scrounge. The exhibit cases were of necessity homemade. He turned unneeded doors into exhibit tables and secured the donation of slabs from a lumber company operating near the park. Meanwhile he launched an aggressive acquisition program, seeking out appropriate specimens as gifts and loans. This was SO successful that he could value the collection at more than $30,000 by the time the museum opened on June 17, 1922. It occupied six rooms designated respectively for history, ethnology, geology, natural history, botany, and trees of the region. By the end of the summer it had attracted more than 33,000 CHAPTER ONE 5 visitors. "Although quarters available are wholly inadequate, the museum has developed into a very creditable one," the superintendent reported. 14 What Hall knew about curatorial work in 1920 had not come from formal museum training. Grinnell and his field staff had doubtless familiarized him with their techniques and standards in the preparation and recording of scientific study specimens. The Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, however, had little interest in exhibition. Harold Bryant and others of the nature guide project also knew how to collect, prepare, and record natural history specimens, but their primary interests lay in person- to-person educational activities- The character of the museum Hall created can be judged from contemporary photographs of the exhibit rooms and published items in Yosemite Nature Notes, an initially mimeographed periodical the park first issued in 1922 with Hall as editor. 15> These sources reveal an understandably amateurish installation. The photographs show a plethora of objects in and atop cases, on and under open tables, along shelves and window sills, and hung on the walls. The display methods appear little influenced by concern for the preservation of the specimens, their didactic use, or their aesthetic effect. The objects were set out primarily to be looked at by visitors. Labeling appears minimal, Yosemite National Park Museum, 1922-25. One of the exhibit rooms in the former Chris Jorgensen studio. 58 PHILANTHROPY AND GUIDANCE, 1924-1934 needed. After approval of the development plan he would present his tentative requirements for the proposed museum building. The Field Division would review and refine these, in continued consultation with the park, and Plans and Design would prepare construction drawings and specifications. The Field Division of Education stood ready to help the park prepare and install the exhibits, but the procedure as laid down left responsibility for exhibit planning unassigned. During 1934 the burden of this step fell largely on Russell and Schellbach. Because they could not keep pace with SO many preparators, some minor chaos was unavoidable Hall felt that every park could use a topographic model of its territory. With the Fort Hunt laboratory busy along the same line, the Berkeley shop produced a large relief map of Mount Desert Island, Maine, and shipped four heavy casts of it across the continent to Acadia National Park. Acadia unfortunately had no place to use even one of them. The Field Division also produced a large relief model of the area immediately east of San Francisco Bay, which had no direct usefulness in the interpretation of any national park. Questionably justified as an experiment to help train the map modelers and painters, it was displayed locally and probably represented an effort to publicize the operation. Other measures to take up the slack had more utility. An assembly line began copying, hand coloring, and binding hundreds of lantern slides for use by park naturalists, although the diversion of the photographer to take innumerable promotional pictures of laboratory activities delayed produc- tion. Less skilled workers made wire tripods in assorted sizes to support round-bottomed Indian pots, many of which were likely to be exhibited in the new museums. Other workers stamped out thousands of metal nature trail labels. In the midst of getting plans and production into full swing, Hall and Russell were summoned to Washington where the Educational Advisory Board was scheduled to consider museum matters. Russell left Berkeley in mid-February 1934 with instructions to visit en route several of the eastern parks proposed for new PWA museums. Vicksburg proved surprisingly attractive. "It would not be an unpleasant job to supervise preparation and installation of materials if a staff of preparators could be made available," he wrote his wife, envisioning the sort of field work he had done in the Southwest with laboratory support such as was developing in Berkeley. He noted that the three enthusiastic ECW historical technicians at Vicksburg had secured CWA workers to help with research but lacked any museum experience. Its absence showed in the "little tacky museum" they had assembled as a start. 70 Russell reached Washington on Friday, February 23, in time to spend the afternoon at Park Service headquarters. Reporting to the Branch of More About the Centennial Page 1 of 9 National Park Service National Park Service Department of the Interior National Center for Cultural Resources 9 0 4 2 MUSEUM. MUSEUM CENTENNIAL History of NPS Museums Centennial Home Treasures the Nation I Ask the Consenator Museums Home Other Links: Early Museum Partners Early Museums: Natural Parks Early Museums Archeological Parks Early Museums: Historical Parks Central Coordination and Leadership Park Staff and Regional Leadership The NPS Collections Ideas and Influence Centennial News All Park Collection NPS Museums 1904-2004 Information The earliest museums in parks were not established by an act of Congress or a central authority, but grew organically from their context in place. Initially, Site Credits they were rudimentary -- a 1904 arboretum in Yosemite, a table of artifacts in the ruins at Casa Grande by 1905, and even a museum in a tent at Sequoia. This strong association with place is a characteristic that continues to distinguish park museums and collections. Stephen T. Mather, the first director, recognized the power of collections that are preserved and presented in their original context when, in 1920, he called for "early establishment of adequate museums in every one of our parks." One of the world's largest museum systems has grown from these early beginnings. More than 350 park units preserve over 105 million museum objects, specimens and archival items to tell the stories of the places where many of the most exciting events of American history, cultural experiences, and natural phenomena have taken place. Although the first rudimentary NPS museums were often the inspiration of a single park employee, park museums did not sprout in a vacuum. Partnerships were integral to the early establishment of full-fledged museums in national parks. The influence of outside factors led to three lines of museum development -- in natural parks, archeological parks, and historical parks. Early museum exhibits were part of the campaign to build public support for the national park idea. In 1917, Director Mather arranged a special paintings exhibit of park landscapes by artists such as Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran, and J.H. Twachtman at the Smithsonian Institution. Many of these paintings are now in park collections. At the request of Director Mather, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution led an early effort to promote the idea that national parks themselves are "museums of Nature." Early Museum Partners Universities and outside museums conducted research that created some of the earliest botanical, zoological, and archeological collections from parks. Historical associations often helped to develop exhibits and furnish historic structures. As early as 1914 the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley, began a study of mammals, birds, reptiles and http://www.cr.nps.gov/museum/centennial/about.html 11/18/2004 More About the Centennial Page 2 of 9 amphibians of the Yosemite region. In 1933, Congress established Morristown National Historical Park, acquiring the Ford Mansion (General George Washington's headquarters), which the Washington Association of New Jersey had operated as a museum for the previous 60 years. This acquisition and a similar arrangement at George Washington Birthplace called for close collaboration with non-governmental organizations. In partnership with the American Association of Museums and with funding from the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, the NPS developed model park museums in Yosemite, Grand Canyon, and Yellowstone National Parks in the 1920s. Museums in these parks are characteristic of developments in parks established as natural areas. Early Museums: Natural Parks By 1915, Yosemite had established a museum in its crowded headquarters building with exhibits of mounted birds, mammals, pressed plants, and watercolor sketches. In 1922, the park opened a museum in the former studio of the artist Chris Jorgensen with rooms devoted to thematic exhibits. A model museum, supported by the American Association of Museums, opened in 1926 featuring exhibits on natural history, ethnology, and park history. In 1926 and 1929 Yosemite opened branch museums at Glacier Point and in the Sierra Club Lodge at Tuolumne Meadows.) The Yosemite Museum Association, another partnership, was established in 1920 and became the first of many cooperating associations throughout the National Park Service to assist park museum operations. By 1922, Yellowstone had opened a museum in the Bachelor Officers' Quarters at park headquarters in Mammoth Hot Springs. Exhibits illustrated botany, geology, paleontology, and zoology. In partnership with the American Association of Museums, the park opened model branch museums at Old Faithful, Madison Junction, and Norris Geyser Basin in 1928-1930 In 1931, the Fishing Bridge Museum opened, though it featured graphics more than specimens in its exhibits. Grand Canyon opened the Yavapai Point Museum as a model museum that included an observation station. With support from the American Association of Museums and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, John C. Merriam, the president of the Carnegie Institution, developed the museum. He created a museum where the canyon was the exhibit and the museum housed viewing instruments, labels, and guided interpretation. The model was SO successful that a generation later it was deemed a classic example of interpretive planning in parks. In 1930, Crater Lake, following this model received one of the first Congressional appropriations to build a new museum and observation station, the Sinnott Memorial. Early Museums: Archeological Parks http://www.cr.nps.gov/museum/centennial/about.html 11/18/2004 More About the Centennial Page 3 of 9 In 1918, Mesa Verde converted a log cabin ranger station into a museum exhibiting prehistoric artifacts from the park's cliff dwellings and large panoramic photographs donated by the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. By 1925, the park built and opened the first section of a new museum with donated funds. In the 1930s, funding from the Public Works Administration supported an extension to the Mesa Verde museum, and constructed numerous other museums throughout the national park system. In 1923, Casa Grande moved its nascent museum exhibit in the ruins into a proper museum with exhibits, a library, maps, an office, and a file/storage room In the 1930s and 1940s Civilian Conservation Corps archeological projects at Ocmulgee, Yorktown, and Jamestown amassed large collections. In 1938, Colonial National Historical Park erected a museum at Jamestown that included an archeological laboratory, collections storage, two small exhibit rooms to orient visitors to the site, and windows allowing the public to view the storage room and activities in the laboratory. The 'visible' storage and laboratory exhibit must have been one of the earliest such examples in the country. Early Museums: Historical Parks In 1917, when the National Park Service began operations, the system of 15 national parks and 21 national monuments included only four areas set aside primarily for their historical significance (excluding archeological parks). These parks were Gran Quivira, Tumacacori, El Morro, and Sitka. Only one historical area had a museum before 1930: Gran Quivira began developing a museum collection in 1925 and by 1929 had opened a modest operation. In 1933, an executive order transferred to NPS monuments and parks under the jurisdiction of the War Department, including battlefields such as Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania, Kennesaw Mountain, Petersburg, and Shiloh; national monuments under the US Forest Service; as well as, parks and monuments in the National Capital Region. In 1935, Congress passed the Historic Sites Act, directing the NPS to "restore, reconstruct, rehabilitate, preserve, and maintain historic or prehistoric sites, buildings, objects, and properties of national historical or archaeological significance" and "establish and maintain museums in connection therewith." The number of historic sites in the system, and associated collections, increased rapidly. Central Coordination and Leadership The independent and geographically dispersed creation of early park museums soon led to the need to establish standards and coordinate development. In 1929, NPS established a centralized Field Education Division at the University of California, Berkeley, which covered all park interpreters (i.e., guides and educators) and wielded considerable control over each park's interpretive personnel and program administration. Carl P. Russell took a new position of "field naturalist-museum advisor" in the Division, becoming the http://www.cr.nps.gov/museum/centennial/about.html 11/18/2004 More About the Centennial Page 4 of 9 first museum expert in a central support function. In 1935 he became chief of the new Museum Division, which coordinated work at the Field Education Division, the new Interior Building Museum, a museum exhibits preparation laboratory at Morristown, New Jersey, (which moved to Ford's Theatre in 1936), and a model laboratory at Fort Hunt, Virginia. His influence led toward centralized rather than park-based exhibit design and production, which continues to this day. The Harpers Ferry Center, established in 1968, in West Virginia, is now the only servicewide center providing exhibits and interpretive services. These services include publications, wayside exhibits, audiovisual programs, museum exhibits, and historic furnishings. The Center also provides interpretive planning, conservation of objects, audiovisual equipment repair, graphics research, replacement of wayside exhibits, and the revision and reprinting of publications. The Denver Service Center, established in 1971, provides centralized services for designing and constructing museum facilities. In 1934, NPS adopted a standard for a Museum Development Plan, closely linked with the evolving park Master Plan concept, which would guide the incorporation of museum functions and facilities into a park's total plan and operations. These plans guided the New Deal public works programs that built many park museums and exhibits in the 1930s through the early 1940s, including Chickamauga and Chattanooga, Guilford Courthouse, Shiloh, Vicksburg, Morristown, Great Smoky Mountains, Hot Springs, Antietam, Fort McHenry, Mammoth Cave, Acadia, Aztec Ruins, Devils Tower, Scotts Bluff, Lassen Volcanic, Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, and Rocky Mountain. A 1939 survey revealed that over the previous four years park museum operations had grown from 36 to 114 and the aggregate exhibit area exceeded that of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum in Washington. Similarly, in 1956, in response to a rapidly growing number of park visitors, the NPS launched a ten-year program, dubbed Mission 66, to build museums. The new museums were called 'visitor centers' to emphasize the multiple visitor services offered. Apart from planning and development of museum facilities and exhibits, there was a need to standardize and coordinate other aspects of museum operations. In 1936, Ned J. Burns, who had coordinated the Morristown laboratory and production of the Interior Museum exhibits, replaced Russell as acting chief of the Museum Division, becoming chief in 1939. In 1940, the NPS director issued guidance to define the proper scope of park museum collections and required standardized accession and catalog records. By 1941, Burns and his staff had published the Field Manual for Museums to guide parks in collections management consistent with professional standards and to standardize certain procedures and forms. The 1955 passage of the Management of Museum Properties Act, authorizing donations, bequests, exchanges, and loans augmented the Historic Sites Act of 1935 in codifying the NPS museum functions. In 1996, amendments to the museum act completed the authorities by adding transfer, conveyance, and destruction. In 1957, NPS issued a Museum Records Handbook to address a problem of http://www.cr.nps.gov/museum/centennial/about.html 11/18/2004 More About the Centennial Page 5 of 9 seriously inadequate museum records in parks. Over the next eleven years additions to the handbook covered acquisition and care of collections, furnished historic structures, and exhibit maintenance and repair. It was renamed the National Park Service Museum Handbook. Ralph Lewis, who served as chief of the Museum Branch (1954-1964) and chief of the Branch of Museum Operations (1964-1971), revised and published the handbook in 1976 under the title Manual for Museums. In 1984, NPS returned to the Museum Handbook title to issue revisions to the record keeping system, eventually issuing a complete revision and adding a new section on access and use of collections. To address the need for detailed technical guidance on caring for collections, NPS initiated the Conserve O Gram series in 1975. In 1970, the Museum Division moved to Harpers Ferry Center. The Branch of Museum Operations became the Museum Services Division in 1973. Arthur C. Allen was chief from 1974 until 1982 when a reorganization placed all functions, except conservation services, under a newly established Curatorial Services Division in Washington. Allen and the regional curators had successfully argued for establishment of a Chief Curator under cultural resources management on the Director's staff. Ann Hitchcock became Chief Curator in 1980 and managed the new division. In the 1980s, the Service began annual assessments of the status of cataloging and preservation and protection conditions in exhibits and storage areas in parks. The backlog of collections to be cataloged was far greater than previously assumed. At the request of Congress, in 1987, the Chief Curator prepared a plan and cost estimate for improving the situation. Congress responded by appropriating funds to address the cataloging backlog and improve preservation and protection conditions that continue to this day. Concurrently, in 1988, the Service automated its cataloging system, calling it the Automated National Catalog System (ANCS). A National Catalog office and vault had been established in 1977 to maintain archival copies of park museum catalog records and establish basic quality control. Automation and new funding rapidly accelerated cataloging SO that in two years, by 1989, parks cataloged more items than had been cataloged in the previous 85 years. By 1998, ANCS had evolved into a total collections management system, called ANCS+, that supported not only cataloging, but also annual reporting of collections statistics, completion of a checklist on preservation and protection conditions, annual inventories, loans, deaccessions, conservation records, and housekeeping schedules. With the advent of the Internet, Websites featuring park collections developed in the 1990s and a Web Catalog was established in 2002. Although work continues to reduce the backlog, today the collections include 50 million cataloged items. Park Staff and Regional Leadership Except for early efforts to centrally control park interpretive and museum staff, park superintendents have been accountable for park museum collections. The duties of park curators have focused on collections http://www.cr.nps.gov/museum/centennial/about.html 11/18/2004 More About the Centennial Page 6 of 9 management, rather than connoisseurship. An ongoing problem has been the lack of staff with curatorial skills, especially when museum collections management was just one of many duties assigned to a park employee. To help address this problem, a museum methods course was first offered in 1948 and continued to be offered in most years through the mid-1990s. As of 2003, over 700 NPS employees have museum management responsibilities. Over 50 percent have other primary duties. As the NPS grew, regional offices formed and took a leadership role in overseeing park museums operations. In 1957, as part of a cataloging initiative, the regions recruited regional curators to assist parks. Eventually, these positions became permanent, with occasional lapses. These experienced curators were especially critical for parks that lacked full-time curators. The regional curators, meeting in committees with park curators and curators in headquarters, played a critical role in ensuring that policies, procedures and servicewide initiatives addressed park museum collections management needs. In 1995, the regional curators, chief curator, and representatives from centers formed the Museum Management Program Council, an advisory group to the associate director for cultural resources, in headquarters. Archeological centers, and more recently museum services centers, played another critical role in caring for park collections. In 1952, an archeological center was established in Globe, Arizona, to provide ruins stabilization in the Southwest and museum management support. The Southeast Archeological Center has its origins at Ocmulgee in 1966, and serves similar purposes. Subsequently, the Midwest Archeological Center, National Capital Region Museum Resource Center, and Northeast Museum Services Center were established. The NPS Collections Museum collections from over 350 units of the national park system are maintained in parks, at six NPS cultural resource centers, and at over 450 non- Federal repositories. These collections include 34.5 million archeological, 3.4 million historical, 1.9 million biological, 290,000 paleontological, 69,000 geological, and 28,000 ethnological objects and specimens, and 65.1 million archival and manuscript items. The collections include items ranging from historic furnishings in the home of John Adams, flags that flew over Fort Sumter, Thomas Edison's handwritten notes on inventions, to botanical specimens from Yosemite and archeological items from Mesa Verde. These museum collections are important not only in their own right, but also because of their direct association with the nationally significant sites in the national park system. The parks that were established primarily for their natural history developed scientific collections early. These nonrenewable collections document change in conditions, species, and habitat over time. For example, the Yosemite collection has 50 specimens of the foothill yellow-legged frog, Rana boylii, which the Yosemite Field School collected in the 1930s. This frog is now absent from the region. The decline of frog and toad fauna is among the most http://www.cr.nps.gov/museum/centennial/about.html 11/18/2004 More About the Centennial Page 7 of 9 serious and urgent conservation concerns in the Yosemite area. In Everglades, a Florida cougar skull, collected solely for exhibit, later became important for its scientific value in helping to resolve taxonomic questions regarding the description of the subspecies Felis concolor coryi. Parks encourage and permit scientists to collect specimens, which, if permanently retained and not consumed in analysis, become museum specimens. Prior to 1984, many of these collections went to universities and non-NPS museums for storage, without adequate tracking by NPS. New procedures, introduced in 1984, require that NPS catalog the specimens and manage them in NPS facilities, or place them on loan to non-NPS partners. A servicewide initiative that began in 1999 to inventory natural resources in all parks accelerated the growth of natural history collections. In spite of this growth, biological, paleontological, and geological collections represent only two percent of the total NPS museum collections. By contrast, archeological collections, which also originate within the boundaries of parks, represent 33 percent of all NPS collections. Sometimes these collections are made before a park is established and they go to other museums. For example, the artifacts found by the Swedish scientist Gustaf Nordenskiold in 1891 at Mesa Verde are in the National Museum of Finland. More often, NPS archeologists collect the artifacts as part of park-sponsored research or recovery and mitigation projects prior to construction or other actions that would destroy the site. Nearly every park has at least some archeological collections from within its boundaries. Collections may be "prehistoric" (from a cultural group without written history), such as those at Bandelier, or "historic," such as those at Jamestown, or a mixture, such as those at Pecos, where both prehistoric Native American and Spanish occupations were present. Some historic collections are acquired nearly complete as part of the acquisition of property for the park. For example, in 1946, when the Adams Memorial Society, donated the property for Adams National Historical Park, the home and library came fully furnished by the generations of the Adams family that had occupied the site for 139 years. Other situations require the park to research and identify those collections that should be acquired. For years Martin Van Buren National Historic Site has tried to acquire the dining table that the President used in his home in Kinderhook, New York. The park had made a replica, but efforts to acquire the original at auction have been unsuccessful to date. Some historical objects are mundane, such as the kitchen tools at Grant-Kohrs Ranch; others have intrinsic national significance, such as the derringer that John Wilkes Booth used to shoot President Abraham Lincoln and the Lincoln cane that Mary Todd Lincoln gave to Frederick Douglass after the President's death. Yet, all are valued for their connection to the place where important events or cultural experiences occurred. Ethnological collections include items acquired from living cultural groups, primarily Native Americans. In 1976, the Jackson Hole Preserve donated the Vernon Collection of over 1,400 items from many tribes to Grand Teton National Park. By contrast, collections at Nez Perce National Historical Park, http://www.cr.nps.gov/museum/centennial/about.html 11/18/2004 More About the Centennial Page 8 of 9 authorized in 1965, focus on a single cultural group. Early in its history, the NPS sought to place archival collections related to parks in other institutions. This approach gradually changed. The largest archival collection is at Edison, which includes business records, family papers, laboratory notebooks on experimental work, audio recordings, photographs, and motion pictures mostly donated by Edison businesses and the family between 1956 and 1968. Another extraordinary archival collection is devoted to the photographs, landscape plans, and drawings associated with Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, established in 1979. The archival collections at most parks include the records associated with resource management, including archeology, the sciences, and historic structure preservation. Archival collections are estimated to represent over 60 percent of the NPS collections, though more than half remain to be described and cataloged. Ideas and Influence The challenges of acquiring, documenting, preserving, interpreting, and providing access to more than 105 million items in over 350 parks in the national park system have called for big scale solutions to local problems. New developments in national park museums have often had a ripple effect in the museum world. For example, parks and other museums have benefited from the procedures, guidelines, and automated systems that NPS has developed. The NPS Museum Handbook (and its precursors, the Field Manual for Museums and Manual for Museums) and Conserve O Gram have been adapted for use by other museums, cited by the AAM in its reference services, and used in museology programs. They have been sold through the Government Printing Office and more recent publications have been made available on the Web. When the Automated National Catalog System was developed for park museums, many small to mid-size museums adopted it as well. The current customized off-the-shelf system is commercially available to other museums as the "National Park Service" version. The Exhibit Conservation Guideline CD-ROM, with over 1,500 copies distributed, is an idea that took hold quickly in the 1990s and remains popular. The 'visitor center' concept, pioneered by the National Park Service in the 1950s is now widespread in parks at local, state, and national levels. NPS has exported ideas abroad, including interpretive planning concepts, the park brochure grid format, and the integration of exhibits and interpretive media in a visitor center. The parks, and park museum collections, have been a testing ground for preservation ideas and strategies. Read More Ann Hitchcock Chief Curator April 2004 http://www.cr.nps.gov/museum/centennial/about.html 11/18/2004