Existing comment:
"Our museums... should be concerned with this theme of presenting truth in a social context."
-- S. Dillon Ripley, Smithsonian Secretary, 1968
MHT didn't just look modern. It intended to think modern. Early on, the new museum experimented with going beyond traditional display techniques and themes to set artifacts in the context of their times and explain the significance of the stories they embodied.
Smithsonian Secretary S. Dillon Ripley led the way, calling for exhibitions based on the latest scholarship. MHT Director Robert Multhauf added curators with Ph.D.s who specialized in the fields of the history of science and technology.
Malcolm Watkins and Anthony Garvan, two anthropologists at MHT, added important social and cultural dimensions to their exhibitions. Watkins created Everyday Life in the American Past in 1964, while Garvan developed themes for a partially-realized exhibition on American culture, Growth of the United States (1967). Daniel Boorstin, MHT's fourth Director, put technology at the center of the American experience and launched the Bicentennial blockbuster exhibit on American pluralism, A Nation of Nations. |