Inspiring generations through knowledge and discovery
After an unprecedented Institution-wide discussion and collaboration, the Smithsonian Institution has adopted a visionary strategic plan that charts our course for the 21st century. The plan (available on Prism and the SI home page) outlines an interdisciplinary approach that will bring the Institution’s vast resources to bear in powerful ways on issues surrounding four major themes:
• Unlocking the mysteries of the universe;
• Understanding and sustaining a biodiverse planet;
• Valuing world cultures; and
• Understanding the American experience.
Torch editor Alex di Giovanni recently spoke with Secretary Clough to learn more about how the strategic plan will be implemented in the years to come.
From your very first day as Secretary you’ve talked about the importance of having a vision for the 21st century. Why is this strategic plan so important for the Smithsonian?
Circumstances continually change for every organization, no matter how long it has been around. The world is changing around us–certainly technology is changing extremely rapidly, audiences change, demographics change, countries change. We have to develop a plan to make sure the Institution is relevant to that new future.
Many strategic plans are top-down directives. Yet this plan involved input from every level of the Smithsonian. Why did you choose that approach?
Unlocking the mysteries of the universe
I felt the Institution had gone through a tough period and it would be a good thing for people to get together to talk about the future, put the past behind us and get moving. Secondly, it was my impression as I made my many visits around the Smithsonian that there were many parts of the organization that didn’t understand what other parts of the organization were doing. There were people who told me, “I’ve never been to Cambridge and I don’t understand what the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory does—I’ve never even met anyone from SAO.” I thought that was a bit surprising.
The more deeply I looked at the Institution, the more I saw ways in which different units could collaborate and work together to do interesting things, but we weren’t prepared to do that. I thought that it was important to get people together to talk about that. It was important to develop a shared vision of what the Smithsonian can do. A shared vision is powerful. Great things can happen.
That’s one of the plan’s recommendations—the need to have collaboration across the Institution. Can you explain how that might be achieved?
When you create collaborative ventures, you first build on your strengths. You can’t do excellent interdisciplinary work without excellent scholarship and expertise and foundations already in place, which the Smithsonian certainly has. Secondly, in addition to the work we currently do and will continue to do, we are trying to create an additional dimension where we can make great contributions because we do have such a breadth of expertise that other institutions just don’t have. For example, a great art museum is just that: a great art museum. But the Smithsonian not only has great art museums, we also have great history and culture museums and great science research centers. Working together allows us to accomplish many, many things no other organization can do. Collaboration can truly bring a new way of thinking about how you work.
It sounds as if we should be striving to be greater than the sum of our parts.
Understanding and sustaining a biodiverse planet
Exactly. The plan identifies four grand challenges for the Smithsonian. For example, the challenge to unlock the mysteries of the universe clearly is relevant to the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, but it also is relevant to the National Air and Space Museum and its Center for Earth and Planetary Studies and the new observatory on Independence Avenue. These units have an obvious connection not only through research and discovery but also through education. But they haven’t really worked together too often, which is interesting. In addition, the theme connects SAO and NASM to the Natural History Museum where there is an obvious intersection with the Global Vulcanism Program and the Antarctic Meteorite Program. But the theme also connects to the American Indian Museum because the Native peoples lived their lives by the stars. They understood astronomy and the natural world in a completely different way than the Europeans. Only the Smithsonian can offer this kind of perspective. We have an understanding not only of the astrophysics and the equations that are necessary to understand astronomy on a theoretical level but also insight into what people understood through intense observation of the natural world.
The challenge to understand and sustain a biodiverse planet is another opportunity. Our approach to climate change is a great example of how the Smithsonian can be relevant by focusing our expertise on a major topic of importance to our country and the world. The Natural History Museum, the Environmental Research Center in Maryland and the Tropical Research Institute in Panama all have great resources and expertise in climate change issues, but address different aspects. If they put their forces together, they have a much more powerful approach to looking at how we’re going to solve that problem. The outside world can see that the Smithsonian brings three powerful entities to bear to solve this problem—not just one. Another good example is the Education and Museum Studies climate change webinar. Look at the range of expertise of the people discussing the topic—art, history, culture and science. The Smithsonian is the only organization in the world that can put together a program like that with its own internal resources.
I attended a number of the scenario-based sessions as the Strategic Plan was taking shape. As people started thinking together across boundaries about how they could collaborate, they really became inspired—the sparks flew. That’s where we want to be, that’s the extra dimension where we can do things we hadn’t thought about doing before and where some really creative things can happen.
So how do we get to that “extra dimension” as an Institution?
Valuing world cultures
We will be creating new interdisciplinary centers around each of our four themes as part of our organizational structure. Centers, such as the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the Air and Space Museum and the Arctic Studies Center at Natural History, are well-established traditions at the Smithsonian, but they operate within individual units and museums. Now we’re talking about creating centers that will help units collaborate in order to do things we’ve never done before. If, for example, we want to hold an interdisciplinary conference on what it means to be an American, we need to coordinate all the Smithsonian entities that contribute to that idea: American History, African American History and Culture, American Art, the Portrait Gallery, and so forth. We need an organizational way to trigger that kind of collaborative thinking and that’s where the centers come into play. This is something that’s very commonly done at universities; I’ve been involved in the development of centers at every university I’ve been at. The centers will be created for the very specific purpose of helping us achieve and contribute more as the Smithsonian than we can if our efforts stay in the stovepipes of individual units. The centers should be smallish in terms of administrative infrastructure while providing resources to individual units as they focus on broader topics. So it’s not adding a layer of bureaucracy, it’s facilitating that cooperation.
Speaking of resources, achieving the goals of the strategic plan is projected to cost as much as 32 percent above our current base through 2015. How will we pay for it?
We’ve thought about resourcing the plan and the good news is that the Smithsonian is an unusual organization in that we have multiple funding streams; we can try to optimize each and every one of those streams. One source of revenue is philanthropy. One of the purposes of this plan is to help us prepare to launch a national capital campaign in the near future. In other words, we wanted to crystallize our goals and the ideas that will inspire donors to support us. The strategic plan also outlines other ways we can generate revenue by being more entrepreneurial within the scope of our mission. We also think we can do a better job of getting grants and other outside funding. Finally, we hope we have established the basis from which to make a strong request to the federal government and so optimize our chances to get additional funding from Congress.
The plan emphasizes using emerging technologies, such as digitization and social media, to broaden access to the collections and reach new audiences. Are we moving away from exhibitions in brick and mortar museums?
Understanding the American experience
There are several reasons why digitizing the collections and putting them online is so important. For example, the Archives of American Art has received a major donation to fund the digitization of their collection and they are well on their way to making the entire archives available online. I asked AAA’s director, John Smith, what the impact of digitization had been. He explained that in the old days, perhaps five scholars a week would ask for access to the collections. Someone would come in and ask to see the archives for Jackson Pollock, for example. They would wait while someone literally pulled out drawers to retrieve documents from the Pollock collection. Now, hundreds of people each week access the digitized collection through the Web—it’s just a fantastic Web site. You can find every document pertaining to Pollock’s life, his ideas, his artistic processes, that we have in our collections—and you don’t have to wait for someone to search through a drawer. The Archives are now accessible to scholars all over the world. They have been so successful that other archives are coming to them for advice.
You mentioned social media. We’re not just going to put up a passive collection online, we’re also going to create an avenue to communicate with people about the collections that we have not had before. However, the digitized collections can’t replace exhibitions. You can’t completely appreciate a great work of art until you’ve stood in front of the actual painting and can see the brushstrokes and experience the reality of the work. Knowing that someone standing beside you is also experiencing that great painting is part of the experience—you have to be there. To my way of thinking, as the collections become more accessible digitally, we inspire more people to come and see the real thing. There is no point in digitizing anything unless you have great museums and great collections and great curators who can provide the understanding of what you are seeing. Digitization takes nothing away from the museums—it expands our accessibility and furthers our mission.
The strategic plan calls for the Smithsonian to be a leader. As I have come to better understand how the Smithsonian is viewed as the world’s largest museum and research complex in the world, I understand the responsibility for the Institution to provide that leadership—in the use of technology, in taking on global challenges, in the increase and diffusion of knowledge. The Smithsonian should be the thought leader on how to proceed in a changing world. And let’s not just allow the future to happen, let’s make it happen and take charge of our destiny.
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Posted: 2 October 2009
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