smithsonian institution. she describes how his enlightened ideas and desire for public access to scientific miss ewing is the author of the lost world of james smithson. this event was hosted by the maryland historical society. lecture,for tonight's exploring the world of james smithson, it is being presented by heather ewing. heather ewing is a graduate of yell university and the institute of art in london. she is currently a research associate of the smithsonian where she once worked as an architectural historian and is the author of anothe a number of books on the architecture and history of the institution. 018, she was the executive director for the center of italian modern art in new york and has worked as well for the john and mabel museum of art in sarasota and the sir john

museum in london. the lost world of james smithson was her first book and she resides in new york. please welcome heather ewing. [applause] heather: thanks for having me. can you all hear me? wonderful. it is really a pleasure to be here. i very much look forward to speaking and meeting with you all afterwards. i just wanted to let you know i will be bowing to you and not shaking hands per our current instructions. i encourage you all to do the same. anyway, i wanted to thank you all very much for having me. it is a pleasure to be here to talk about this topic that i care about so much. and so, here we go. you all know the smithsonian well as the keeper of many of the most iconic objects of american culture.

and, i thought i would run through a bunch of them. dorothy's ruby slippers, of course. charles lindbergh's spirit of st. louis. abraham lincoln's top hat. since we are here in baltimore, this is the star-spangled banner. soon after it came to the smithsonian where it was conserved for the first time in the marines life hall. that is a giant squid over it there. obviously much, much more than that as well. i'm excited to talk about that with you this evening. that extraordinary uniqueness begins with its origins. it's quite hard to believe this place think of that is so very our nationalically museum system was the brainchild of someone who was not an american at all. so, our story begins in 1835

when the new capital of .c. was a little more than a few grand colossal buildings and some muddy boulevards. this is when the united states learned they were the beneficiary of this request. a mysterious english scientist named james smithson had left his fortune to the u.s. to found -- this is a quote -- was hington under the name of the smithsonian institution, establishment of the diffusion of knowledge among men. so who was this person, that was what everyone wondered. no one had heard of him. they learned smithson was the illegitimate son of the duke his half-brother, later the second duke who is on the right had fought against the

americans in the revolutionary war. lived a life inieve europe and he never married. he had no children. he had dedicated his life to science. that was about all they had found out. but most curious of all was the fact that he had never even visited the united states and he didn't seem to have any connection here to the people or the place. so, some in congress wondered whether the united states should even accept this gift. was this really generosity or was this something by a megalomaniac that just wanted his name on a building in the nation's capital? was he mentally fit? they asked all these questions. there was some debate in congress and they decided at least to go and accept the money and then they would figure out what to do. rush, who wasard a lawyer and a former ambassador

to the port of st. james, and also the son of benjamin who had been one of the signers of the declaration, a prominent physician. they sent him over to london. he had to fight for the funds in court. thatd successfully bring to a conclusion in just over two years, which was at the time an extraordinarily speedy result, because if any of you had read house that tells the story of this generations long lawsuit, this is set at the same time. dickens describes the case as being ground to bits in a slow mill. being roasted at a slow fire. being stung to death by single bees. it is being drowned by drops. it is going mad by grains.

our term of redtape today comes from chancellery court and the ribbons they wrapped around these voluminous court records. richard rush comes back to the united states. he successfully put the money, which was about 105,000 pounds, into u.s. currency, just over $500,000. the equivalent today of maybe $15 million which does not sound quite so extraordinary. because you could imagine the smithsonian in recent years has received several donations that are quite a bit larger than that. but at the time, if we go back to the 1830's, it was truly an extraordinary gift. and, i like to think of it as in a couple of different ways. of theabout 1/66th entire federal budget then, which today as you can imagine since we are talking about trillions of dollars as our federal budget, it would be a

very big number indeed. another way to think about it is it was essentially the equivalent of harvard university's endowment. rush wasn 1838 when coming back is about 200 years at this point. their endowment is not the gift of one person, but of many gifts. this gift wasof really quite exceptional. so now congress had to decide what is an institution for the increase and diffusion of knowledge? and, they wondered is it a national library, a national university? john quincy adams, who after being president was back in congress, wanted an astrophysical observatory. other congressmen wanted teacher training colleges or agricultural station. decade, they

debated and tabled bills and thought over what they should be. there were others still who didn't think it should happen. a number of southern congressman who were extremely wary of having a national institution. who was essentially a contemporary of smithson, and he had spent a lot of his childhood in europe with his father diplomacy and science. he felt himself to understand the sort of aspirations behind smithson's gift and he really fought for it to happen. the eventual bill finally passed in 1846 which i realize was two years after the institution was created. i used to say it was a classic congressional compromise. i just don't know such a thing exists anymore. but, it included a little bit of everything.

library, museum, laboratory, lecture hall, a sculpture gallery. it was this construct in a way that gave rise to everything that we have today. this idea that there were these multiplicity of purposes that the smithsonian could be. the smithsonian came to view their founder as an enigma. this eccentric person. and the reasons behind the bequest, mysterious and unknowable. this is some truth to this. this is the last page of the will in england. it gives no details really as to the purpose or the administration of this proposed institution. and further, the bequest was only a contingent one because it was originally going to the nephew and only if the nephew was to die with no heir with the money come to the united states. that is in fact precisely what

happened. six years after smithson's death, the nephew who was still in his 20's, unmarried, and without any heir died in a hotel l by himself and triggered this news to the smithsonian -- i mean, to the united states. so, the mystery of smithson's intent was compounded by a terrible fire early in the history of the smithsonian. this is an actual photo of the fire that has been dramatized by the photographer. all of smithson's papers in his diaries and all the belongings that richard rush had brought coins,long with the gold that was pretty much all lost. and we know because there was one person who looked through all the papers when they first came to the smithsonian, we knew

there were about 200 unpublished manuscripts, that he had been keeping a diary since he was a teenager. this man who looked up all the stuff said that smithson was clearly such a curious person. had an insatiable curiosity. thbaat he had a long and intimae acquaintance with the world, clearly. so, one of the things that happened when all of your things are gone and there is no heirs or loves or anything left behind, one of the things that happens is that it is very easy for a sort of caricature to emerge of a person who is just a recluse or an eccentric or this wealthy, odd gambler, basically. so, when i set out to search for smithson, i wanted to see if it was even possible to build a three dimensional layered

portrait of this person, to weave him back into the times in which he lived and to see who and what had impacted him when he was growing up. obviously, especially to ponder this idea of how he came to write this incredible will. gives us ahis story new perspective on this remarkable american institution. one that takes us all the way back to the european enlightenment. so, my question was how do you t writing a biography from someone who has essentially vanished on the historical record. i knew i was not going to be able to find him in the card catalogs and archives of libraries in europe. i have to find a different way maphat i did was to try to his networks. his family, his friends, his social circles.

to figure out the circles, what i ended up calling the lost world of james smithson, that he was operating in. i started at oxford where he went to pembroke college. there he is in his robes. and, i investigated the people that he was surrounding himself with and the few records i could find. he was very interested in chemistry already by the time he was at oxford. that was a subject that was not very gentlemanly. you were getting your hands dirty and things like that. he was part of this pretty radical avant-garde progressive group of students and teachers who were focused on the subjects that were considered kind of french and suspect. and, he did some remarkable stuff. he already was building a reputation for himself there.

at the royal society in london, i found the names of people he had brought as guests to all the meetings. that gave me names to work off of. this one i labeled in particular, he had his mother's name for the first years of his life. he's on the right-hand side. those are the people he is bringing. i thought it was interesting because his half-brother is in that particular meeting as another guest. on the right are his bank records, which also still exists in london. thatll of these were ways i started together names and dates to place him in certain places thaat any time. the smithsonian acquired a bunch latepers in the 1900s -- on the right, there were a couple of letters of

calling cards. people dropped by his department in paris. on the left, these are mineral notes from his catalogs. those are names of people he was treating specimens with and stuff like that. so that was how i started to piece things together at the beginning. a new portrait emerged of him. not this loner eccentric person, but someone who was incredibly enthusiastic and ambitious and usually talented, and also quite conflicted. and, his family story plays a big part in that conflict. is 18th-centuryrld england that smithson grew up in was about patronage. who you were able to marry, that sort of thing. smithson was a product of a liaison between the duke of northumberland and a wealthy

widow who was a cousin of the duchess of northumberland. he was born in paris where his mother had gone to have the child in secret, so we don't know his actual birthday but it is sometime around 1765. might bemother, who this woman, this is an unidentified portrait. she was named elizabeth hungerford macie. she was this wealthy widow. up until the time i was working on this, we really knew nothing about her, but there were dozens and dozens of lawsuits at the public record office as it turns out. all of a sudden, there was really a lot of extraordinary insight du into who she was. she was extremely litigious and very extravagant. she had lots of dresses and several carriages. she was quite fierce, really. she sued everyone you could

possibly imagine. --s i found so touching that farmis an illiterate tenant of hers. he is just signing with his little mark there. he's one of the people who sued -- she sued her sister. she sued eventually her own lawyer. it is really kind of incredible. anyway, these lawsuits were completely amazing to me and helped me understand something the sort of psychological environment that smithson was growing up in. she was very proud of her family tree. she could trace her lineage back to henry viii. she instilled in smithson this idea he was from this very

important family. a lot of these lawsuits have to do with ancestral property that she has a woman she was trying to gain control of. she had an older brother who died quite young, so all of a sudden, she had this opportunity to gain control of these properties and she really went after them. lines, one of the few that was taken out of smithson's papers before he died was this one that talks about the best blood of england running through smithson's veins and how it avails him not -- this is something i have in my mind that needed to be sort of thought about when imagining why you might give your fortune to a place that was not england. one of thebooks were only things that survived that fire. today, they are in the cullman

rare book library at the smithsonian national history museum. they also reveal this obsession with his family, and especially with his dad. everywhere in his book that his father is mentioned, he made this little note in the margins. this is dr. johnson's account of going to scotland. boswell stopped at duke'sastle where the seat was at northumberland and talked about being received graciously. the duke is one of only about 26 england the whole of and one of the most magnificent men in england at the time. he's a trendsetter, peacemaker. really a celebrity at the beginning of the age of celebrity.

this is when the first town & country magazine starts. he's all over it with his affairs and everything else. so, when he and the duchess would enter a town, the bells would ring. their movements were tracked in the papers. their parties and their clothing. everything was written about. he'd never publicly acknowledged james smithson. so, it would probably be something like having brad pitt as your secret dad who never recognized you. as i mentioned, smithson spent the first 35 years of his life as james lewis macie, which is the name of his mother. as soon as she died, he petitioned the crowd to change his name to smithson, which would have publicly aligned him with hugh smithson which was the duke of northumberland's

original name. but it also would have telegraphed he was illegitimate because he was carrying the smithson and not the percy or northumberland name. the illegitimacy was something that really troubled and weighed heavily on smithson all his life. but, the principal story that emerged from my search for smithson was the context of enlightenment science and this brought international network of correspondents that smithson was operating in. it was sort of an essential part of his life. 19, twooxford at age years before he was technically graduating, to join this scientific expedition to scotland. they were going specifically to cave, which singles had recently become known to

scientists. i won't say discovered. anyway, it had barely been written about. smithson was going to try to make his name by collecting specimens and was studying this place. there were four of them. this french geologist was leading the expedition. the first italian balloonist. and, another man, a scottish who soond draftsman after this immigrated to the united states. you might know him as the men who won the competition to design the u.s. capitol building, william thorton. where they all eventually fell out and left separately -- it was kind of a catastrophe. smithson sort of met all of the in edinburgh. what wouldhed

establish the rest of his life. going to town, meeting all the leading scientists, getting to know them. exchanging specimens and information with them. so as soon as he gets back to london, he does not go back to oxford, he goes to london. he immerses himself in the coffeehouse culture and the scientific networks of the capital. and, he becomes what was then the youngest member of the royal society, very prestigious institution, where he eventually published 27 papers, including the one that led to the naming of smithsonite after his death. which the smithsonian never happened, it would be the only thing we remember smithson by today. in science, smithson finds this world where he is valued for what he can contribute in the talents he brings to the table, not for his bloodline or for who his father is.

science in a way is the closest thing that the world has at that time to americ meritocracy. for smithson who is so troubled by his legitimacy and troubled by the circumstances of his birth, it opens up a new possibility for the future. a world governed by science and by law and reason, rather than church or king or heredity or superstition. and, america is that new future for him. the united states, for smithson and his chemist friends, represents the embodiment of all these aspirations. all of these men in these coffeehouses in london are trying to create a new egalitarian mode of sharing information. the royal society is quite formal and topdown. here, they're more interested in the exchange and testing knowledge. across the ocean at this very

time in the late 1780's, the u.s. is writing its constitution and in barking, if you will, on a similar radical experiment. this idea of making a new kind angovernment, as exciting as experiment is any scientific one at this time. the statesmen who are leading this test benjamin franklin and thomas jefferson -- they understood the importance of increase of diffusion of knowledge. they talk about it a lot. they were themselves scientists and leaders and founders of scientific societies which were called then philosophical societies. so, for the presidential example,of 1800, for it is pitting john adams, president of the american academy of arts and scientists, against thomas jefferson, who was the president of the american philosophical society. so, that's the sort of atmosphere that smithson is observing from afar.

george washington in his farewell address to the nation, he calls specifically for the promotion of institutions for the diffusion of knowledge. this language is in the air then. the other thing that would have touched smithson deeply is that the united states at this time became a place of refuge for chemists like smithson, because across the channel, france's completely melting down. and for smithson and his friends, this is super exciting. it's evidence that the most entrenched in ancient monarchy in europe could collapse at a pace that is scarcely to be believed. so even the corrupt regime can be transformed. smithson went right over to paris. he wrote a letter back saying stupidity and guilt have had a long reign. he was absolutely euphoric. he said it begins indeed for it

to be time for justice and common sense to have their turn. so, one of these chemists is joseph priestly. leadinglso a theologian. you can see how these papers are making fun of these chemists, basically. his home and laboratory in birmingham were torched by a mob during the anniversary of the bastille falling and he had to flee first to london and then the united states. he spent the last decade of his life in pennsylvania and he was welcomed here personally by thomas jefferson. back in england, this public letter was published, telling him not to worry. happiergoing to ba world, the world of washington and franklin.

a country where science has turned to better use. this will also give you a feel for how smithson might have been imagining what the united states was like. and, he really believed wholeheartedly that science held the key to progress and the amelioration of the human condition. he had seen throughout his life that chemistry could transform the lives of many and it made it everything worthy of study for him. he studied the coin in his pocket. he analyzed a lady's tear. his brother brought back an egyptian statue from the napoleonic wars and smithson analyzed the ancient colors that were on it. he even tried to understand when mushed on most on --

a piece of paper and it turned green, he was trying to understand that green color. he felt for us to understand the natural world, we needed to study everything and we needed to share what we learned with each other. scientistsis fellow for not sharing absolutely everything, even little improvements to your apparatus. he really took this to heart. this was one of his 27 papers which is an improved method of making coffee. but in one of his last papers, he wrote something that i thought was particularly lovely, laying out his philosophy that it has been his knowledge that man has found his greatness and his happiness. like to think that smithson would be quite pleased to see that the smithsonian in the last week has just released -- i don't know if you saw the news -- this nearly 3 million images into the public domain under a creative common hero

license, which means you all can use them however you like even if you wanted commercially to do something with them. they are free for everyone to use them, no rights reserved. this is part of an effort that the smithsonian and many other museums are engaging in now to open up their collections and make them much more accessible to the public. and, it certainly seems to be in keeping with the way that smithson was thinking about knowledge and accessibility. he conducted his experiments using very simple tools, like even the bowl of his pipe or a wineglass, because he wanted people to be able to replicate his experience. he was really well known for working with a blow pipe and working in miniature. this is a chemist in massachusetts who taught me how the blow pipe worked. we were melting copper at 2000 degrees. it is kind of mimicking a furnace but in a really tiny and

controlled environment. this is in market contrast to what was happening in france. wifeis a scientist and his anne marie he was also a chemist. the french were known for having super expensive apparatus. smithson could have had these things. he certainly have the money, but he followed another ethos and creed. in keeping with that, he was one of the founding proprietors of the royal institution in london, which was opened in 1799. whose charter bears some similarity to the idea of the smithsonian in smithson's will. it was established for diffusing useful knowledge and for the application of science for the common purposes of life. it offered lots of programs and lectures that were very popular with men and women and society in general. and, here's a sort of cartoon

airs -- they're exploring and pneumatics at this point in the early 1800s. these lectures were so popular, in fact, where the royal institution is today -- you can go visit it -- it became the first one-way street in london because there were so many carriages coming to drop people off to the lectures. smithson's enlightenment ideals forged initially in the coffeehouses of london and topired by useful s tintint revolutionary paris were tested and eventually reinforced by his experiences during the napoleonic wars where he was captured and held as a prisoner of war for over two years. for much of his life, as you can imagine, europe was at war and it really impacted his ability to travel and to work. it hampered the communications

between all these friends. but, smithson and his scientific friends tried to maintain proclaimed they over and over that the sciences were not at war. here's one letter that smithson's writing to one of his friends friends. ench friends. he says the work of scientists for nation should be considered citizens of the world. in fact, it is this fraternity of science that is what gets smithson out of prison, in fact. the head of the royal society in london writes to the head of the academy in paris, and that person goes to napoleon and gets smithson out of prison. this aspiration to be a citizen of the world is very important to smithson. it is tokey element of

be a benefactor of all mankind, basically. and, i think it is that sentiment that lies behind the archaic words that are in the will. you can see it in a postage stamp from 1846. this is from a more recent website of the smithsonian and you will see they leave off the last two little words, amoong likemen, because it sounds they are ignoring half the population. however, i do think they are really important because i think the gift was not just do the united states. i think it was entrusted to us wasall the world because it thought that we were the people with this new kind of government that could best foster the support -- and offer support for the increase of knowledge and

the betterment of mankind. the bequest,at even though it is a mysterious thing, when it is seen in this light, it does not seem quite so random. it is sort of the natural extension, even if extraordinary, of someone who grew up in this explosion of knowledge and revolution at the end of the 18th century. it is obviously a very moving testament to the ideals that informed the founding of the u.s. and the kind of place america held in the imagination of people like smithson. soin just my last five or minutes, i wanted to fly through some of the smithsonian today. smithson is the kind of honorary american now, thanks to these two. he's now spent more time in the united states than he has anywhere else. around 1900, the cemetery in

italy where he was buried was being moved and alexander graham bell and his wife mabel felt that smithson should be honored for all he has done in creating the smithsonian. they went over to italy to bring him back. as theythe cortes arrived back from the u.s. navy yard. the supreme court, lots of people were involved in this. they had him lying in state at the smithsonian for a while. misses bell documented the entire thing. this is them at the cemetery in genoa. that is our u.s. consul on the right in what he called his last pose. with smithson. alexander graham bell was not so foolish to be photographed with smithson's skull. anyway, there was a competition to build a monument to smithson. for a very brief moment at the beginning of the 20th century, we nearly elevated smithson to a

founding father. this monument on the left would have been the size of the lincoln memorial. in the end, the smithsonian took the original sarcophagus from the cemetery in italy and installed it in what they called the crypt, which is today in the capital building so you can go visit him. he lies here mostly again forgotten, but his name in the form of the smithsonian is one of the most famous we have, obviously. this open nature of the bequest i mentioned earlier meant in a way that smithson's gift could become almost anything it needed to be. in the 170 plus years since the founding, this missoni and has grown in many, many direction -- the smithsonian has grown in many directions. i want to fly through more of the american treasure house objects, like thomas jefferson's desk that he wrote the declaration of independence on. there are the portraits of the presidents.

and some that are connected to them like the first ladies gown, even a collection of hair from the presidents. monuments of technological triumph. the wright brothers flyer. that is the apollo 11 capsule that carried those astronauts back to the united states. it's kind of a great window into how we have enshrined a lot of american history at the smithsonian. that traveled around the country in 1970 and went immediately into the smithsonian seven years even before the construction and opening of the air and space museum. then, there is kermit. there's also julia child's kitchen. the smithsonian is still collecting, obviously all the time. awcett's swimsuit came a year ago. lin-manuel miranda gave his cost

of. smithsonian is collecting election memorabilia. it is one of the largest collections of its kind. about 150,000 objects around the election in the united states. 3.5 years ago, the smithsonian opened its national museum of african-american history and culture on the mall. i encourage you all to go to. it is extraordinary and has quickly become one of the most visited and beloved museums on the mall. they had to build that collection from scratch. shortey did so in a very period of time and have many incredible objects with really wonderful stories. on the right is harriet tub hymnal book, -- not the bible. it had been kept very carefully

under someone's bed waiting for the right moment. it could have gone to many other institutions. this is also the significance of having a home on the national mall. the smithsonian as a treasure house of americana or a lens on our national identity , as powerful as that is, offers only a very limited portrait of the scope of the place. so, there are many, many museums -- i mentioned 19 national history, sculpture, art, air and space, native american culture, in new york and in washington. african art, american art, design. the cooper-hewitt in new york is on the bottom there. and, the national zoo which got its start behind the castle building, trying to preserve the

american buffalo from going extinct. but, there is much, much more than these museums that we know. there are nearly a dozen research centers, and the kind of work that is going on behind the scenes is really extraordinary. a tropical research institute in panama, which goes back more than 100 years. the smithsonian went down there during the construction of the panama canal to do a photo environmental research study to understand the impacts of joining up those two watersheds. there is a big focus on coastal marine ecosystems. there is a station in florida, one in maryland, another in belize. the smithsonian is running an astrophysical observatory with harvard which also has its roots in something more than 100 years

old. they were leading the team that photographed the blackhole last year. and, they run a global volcanism program, tracking octave volcanoes around the world. there's an arctic study center. the smithsonian is very active rescue.ral hav heritage doing training both in the u.s. when there is an earthquake or hurricane. aq, syria,aboard in ir brazil, haiti. collaborating with the military to safeguard cultural heritage and recognize artifacts. the smithsonian is also even operating in outer space. they are running the x-ray telescope observatory for nasa. this long tradition of research and the depths it gives to the collection and to the ongoing work of the institution is one of the things i think that sets

it really a part. some of those collections even predates the smithsonian. their origins are in government expeditions, exploring the country and abroad. many of them have purposes well beyond what was originally imagined when they were collecting. who is roxy layborn was one of the curators. she created forensic ornithology which has helped to identify the bird that were in the strikes like the famous plane that landed on the hudson. every day, there are these fedex packages with grisly remains showing up at the institution. youngr example is this scientist, chris helgin, who discovered the first new species of carnivore to be id'ed in the western hemisphere in 40 years.

super cute, member of the raccoon family. news also discovered a species of samoan flying fox bats, previously unknown to science, that had been sitting in a case in the smithsonian for 150 years. this is one of the things that is most remarkable to me. if you remember that terrible fire at the national museum in brazil, that collection was 200 years old. these are the kinds of things that are lost, really almost more than the specimens. it is the research that has not yet been done that will never be able to recover. smithsonianme, the is most remarkable for this, both for its history and for the potential it holds. and so, i just wanted to end

here. this institution is obviously, undoubtedly a very different creature than the one that might have been birthed in smithson's lifetime for imagined by him. ultimately, i think it could be seen as a manifestation of some of the loftiest of american ideals, and those ones that were -- most attracted smithson when he imagined the u.s. and i see this most powerfully in the bricks and mortar kind of creation of the institution. its manifestation here on the mall that we as a country dedicated this ground, which at the foot of the national government, probably our most important public space in the country -- that we dedicated this ground to the pursuit of knowledge. and, that these buildings are open and free to everyone. thank you very, very much for having me.

[applause] heather: i'm happy to answer questions if anyone has them. there is microphones. >> how is the smithsonian financed today? heather: very good question. so, the smithsonian, i believe the budget is about $1.5 billion now. nearly 70% of that is coming from the federal government. 15, 20 yearsout after the institution was set up when it became, with these world fairs that were bringing lots of materials to the smithsonian, they were able to negotiate for care for the national collection, basically. the rest of that money, more

than 30%, is raised privately. smithson's --like obviously many more today from individuals and from foundations and from corporations. there is one down here. >> so, you have one building that you start with and now we have -- heather: a lot. >> more than a dozen or two. what has made this succeed? heather: say it again. >> what has made this succeed? is it because of people in the united states endorsing the idea endorsing government the idea more? could you speak about what are some of the challenges for the smithsonian? heather: sure.

buildingd go from one to many, many, many. it started with that bicentennial exposition in paris and the smithsonian getting all the stuff afterwards. so, that second building came to be called the u.s. national museum building. today, it is the arts and industries building, if you all know that. and it grew from there. the next building after that is the national history which is again the national museum building. or, some of the buildings collections are private gifts but, many of them have grown organically and have been -- everything has to be approved by congress. so, it usually takes a long time. in fact, the first movement for

the african-american history and culture museum was almost 100 years ago, i think. a very long time ago that these movements happened and it takes years for it to become approved by congress. then, the fundraising has to happen because there is never just amount of money that is going to cover everything. they have to do a lot of fundraising as well. >> it was clear that even by the standards of the day that smithson was a very wealthy man. i wouldn't call it a life of leisure because he was obviously very busy and very intent on his clearly had a great deal of money to expand and then eventually to bequeath. was that money from, essentially from his highly litigious mother

and her side, or did he have any inheritance or funds from the north numbe -- heather: fantastic question. it was a question i tried to get to the bottom of. finding those bank records is fascinating. he clearly inherited -- he inherited about 10,000 pounds from his mother, but the gifts he left the smithsonian was over 100,000. those lawsuits help me understand she was spending a lot herself. she might have left him a lot more money than she actually did. dukee to imagine that the did quietly fund smithson in some fashion. i tried to track that because, fortunately at the bank was also smithson's account, the duke's

account, and also the lawyer's. i was looking at passages of money from the duke's account into the lawyer's and two mrs. macie. it was happening but not a clear sum. at the time she was suing everyone, i didn't expect to see money coming from her lawyer into the account when it should have been going the other direction. the duke had four illegitimate children. and the two that were girls were able to carry his name and they were actually given names of his mother and sister of his. so, -- and they were very close with james smithson. they actually left him small amounts in their own wills as well. it's very possible. i'm curious about his legitimacy. he was concerned about the fact

that he was a smithson because he grew up with the name macie. however, he knew the day he became a smithson, people would know he was the illegitimate child of the duke of northumberland. how do you compare both of these? heather: interestingly, he already made a name for himself as macie. it was really a calculation and it happened so quickly after his mother died, that he has to write someone to say that my mom wanted me to do this because it probably looked awful that he did it almost when she is not yet cold. guess it was really important to him. one of the things that was also in play here is that because he was born in paris, he was not even a citizen. he needed to be naturalized, so that was a further factor in his

being sort of on the outside. it limited the kinds of positions that he might be able to have, which might otherwise, even as an and legitimate person could have been able to get a certain title or position. and being born in france prevented that. there were lots of things going on that contributed to this sense of being outside and being not entitled to things. >> [indiscernible] the second part of the gentlemen's question where he was asking what kept this going. how are things approved and what kept us doing it? what kept people from throwing up their hands and saying we don't want to spend anymore money on this? heather: you mean before the act was actually passed? museum to go from one

a constellation, it is just amazing. heather: every year, the smithsonian has to go up the hill, capitol hill and make their case to congress. so, just as the national endowment for the humanities and things like that. they have to make their case for what they are doing and why it's important. an awful lot of research that's happening behind the scenes. they are also arguing for that and for the care of the collection. way is thein a national museum system. my sense is that is what's going on. when things are bursting out of the seams that they need more space, they are fighting for that as well. alsoinly, they are inviting congress down to see what they are up to and that

sort of thing as well. >> [indiscernible] heather: right. i mean, there is quite a long interregnum in a way. reer gallery opens right after world war i. fore is no museums built about 30, 40 years. happened -- the first one is the american history museum which at the time was called the museum of history and technology. that is the first modern building that was done in the late 1950's and early 1960's. from basically 1920 two almost 1960, there is no expansion. then, there's an awful lot that happens in the 1960's. exactly. new leadership. that is when dillon ripley became the head of the smithsonian in 1964.

he was the leader for about 20 years. under him, many, many museums and the smithsonian grew immensely during that time. question.r one more >> one thing that keeps it going is all of you. if you drive constitution avenue or independence avenue on any given morning, you will see lines waiting to get into those museums. so, it is the public that keeps it going and those are the people that also write their congressmen and senators any time smithsonian is threatened. so, you are what keeps it going and perpetuates it. heather: you are absolutely right. and the fact just about every school child makes their privilege --pilgrimage there. thank you very much.

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