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Updates on 

Smithsonian

RESEARCH
Clockwise, from top left:

Editorial in Science Feathers Special Issue on Bird Genomics/Office of the Under 

Secretary for Science

The December 12, 2014, special issue of the leading journal Science was dedicated to genomic research 

on birds. In it, W. John Kress, Interim Under Secretary for Science, offered a commentary “Valuing 

Collections” that highlights the importance of scientific collections for science and society. Kress said, “ . 

. . museum collections, and the species they represent, provide windows into the past, inform about the 

present, and help predict the future of natural habitats and human-altered environments.” These 

collections include preserved specimens, living individuals, and frozen tissue samples from which DNA 

can unlock mysteries of extinct species. Kress offered, “The most pressing challenge is to build 

collections for future needs that maximize access and benefit-sharing for all. Collections must be 

sustained for the long term, which will require increased funding for their physical and scientific 

curation.”

Untitled: The Art of James Castle/Smithsonian American Art Museum

James Castle (1899–1977) is considered one of the most important self-taught artists in the United 

States. For nearly seven decades, Castle gathered materials around his rural Idaho home — such as 

packaging, advertisements, string, and soot — and created elaborate and unmistakable representations

of his world. Images of obscured vistas, intricate interiors, remote farmscapes, stylized figures, and 

arcane charts of letters and symbols simultaneously invite and thwart access or understanding. Castle’s 

artworks, each of which is untitled and undated, served as the primary means of reflection and 

expression for an artist who was born profoundly deaf, without a conventional way to communicate 

with others. 

Untitled: The Art of James Castle, which opened September 26, 2014, and is on view at the Smithsonian 

American Art Museum through February 1, 2015, celebrates this enigmatic artist and the museum’s

major acquisition of 54 of his artworks. The museum is now a center for the study of Castle, with the 

largest collection of works by the artist outside of his home state of Idaho, which befits a collection 

committed to the support and interpretation of the visual culture of a citizen democracy. The museum 

published a book to accompany the exhibition, with essays by Nicholas R. Bell, the Fleur and Charles 

Bresler Senior Curator of Craft and Decorative Art, and Leslie Umberger, curator of folk and self-taught 

art. The essays, along with the representative sample of Castle’s vast oeuvre on display, serve as an 

essential introduction to an unlikely star in an expanded history of American art.

[Image: Untitled / James Castle (1899–1977) / found paper and soot / n.d. / Smithsonian American Art 

Museum, Gift of the James Castle Collection and Archive and museum purchase through the Luisita L. 

and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment] 
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Smithsonian Launches New Institute for Biodiversity Genomics/

Pan-Smithsonian Initiative

Scientists across the Smithsonian have applied genomic technologies in their research for years, 

investigating how animal and plant species function, including how species are related by evolution to 

one another, adapt to change, and thrive or fail to survive. The field of genomics also plays a key role in 

their research on climate change, disease, and biodiversity conservation. The Smithsonian is now uniting 

these efforts and creating a plan for transformative future research with the establishment of the 

Smithsonian Institute for Biodiversity Genomics. This virtual institute will provide more impact from 

existing investments, and provide a stronger foundation for fundraising for genomics-related projects, 

including the Global Genome Initiative.

The institute will build on the Smithsonian’s unique assets, including its scientists, the world’s largest 

natural history collection of 127 million specimens, and its power to convene. Investments in 

biodiversity genomics research will focus on four key areas:

1. Diversity Genomics: What are the origins of life and how are species related across the globe?

2. Evolutionary Genomics: How does the blueprint of life vary among individuals and species and 

what does this mean for their ability to adapt?

3. Ecological Genomics: How do ecosystems work and what makes them resilient to change?

4. Conservation Genomics: How do we sustain biodiversity and protect species and 

ecosystems?

Tools: Extending Our Reach/Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

As the inaugural exhibition in Cooper Hewitt’s new 6,000–square-foot Barbara and Morton Mandel 

Design Gallery, Tools: Extending Our Reach is one of the most extensive pan-Smithsonian exhibitions 

presented in recent years. It brings together some 175 objects from across 10 Smithsonian collections, 

ranging in date from a 1.85-million-year-old Paleolithic hand chopper to live images of the Sun. These 

objects represent the extraordinary breadth and depth of the Smithsonian’s vast collections, which most 

audiences in New York City have never seen before.

Tools is not a traditional survey of the history of tools, or a hierarchy of the “best” designs from around 

the world, but an exploration of the intimate relationship between human beings and the instruments 

we invent and employ. Many tools are extensions of our physical selves, efficient surrogates filling in 

where humans lack capacity. They are the first evidence of human design, and today, more than ever, 

they are opening up worlds to us, including those we cannot yet travel to physically.

Research began on this exhibition in 2009 when Cooper Hewitt’s Cara McCarty and Matilda McQuaid, 

cocurators of Tools, presented an exhibition proposal to feature design objects from across the 

Smithsonian for Cooper Hewitt’s new galleries. Not only would this reinforce Cooper Hewitt’s ties to the 

Smithsonian, it also would underscore the prevalence of design throughout the Smithsonian. A Grand 

Challenges Level One grant in 2011–2012 enabled travel by McCarty and McQuaid to Washington, D.C.,
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to visit collections and discuss with over 60 curators and specialists the scope of the project and to enlist 

their support and participation. The catalog accompanying the exhibition reflects their input with texts 

by 48 Smithsonian staff from Cooper Hewitt, the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery,

the National Air and Space Museum, the National Museum of American History, the National Museum 

of Natural History, the National Museum of the American Indian, the National Postal Museum, 

Smithsonian Libraries, and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Educational programs planned during the exhibition will involve curators from several Smithsonian

museums. The first program, “Big and Bigger: Designing for Scale,” will occur on January 8, 2015, and 

feature Paul Ceruzzi from the National Air and Space Museum. The Smithsonian Channel also featured 

Tools as part of their Seriously Amazing series and several Smithsonian curators participated in the 

program.

[Image: A live feed of the Sun transmitted by an orbiting satellite]

New Research and Collections Partnership with the U.S. Department of 

Agriculture/National Museum of Natural History

The U.S. National Parasite Collection (USNPC) is a national and international resource for systematic, 

taxonomic, diagnostic, ecological and epidemiological research in parasitology. Since its founding in 

1892, the USNPC has been developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in Beltsville, 

Maryland. The USDA and the Smithsonian have articulated an agreement to transfer the USNPC to the 

National Museum of Natural History. This expands on the long partnership in insects between the 

Smithsonian and the USDA, and involves USDA staff stationed at NMNH with the collection. The current 

USNPC staff, including the USDA senior curator and two support scientists/managers, also have been 

transferred with adjunct appointments in the NMNH. The scope and depth of the collection are 

unparalleled in North America and make it one of the top three most significant parasite collections in 

the world. Current holdings are substantial (in excess of 100,000 specimen lots, with over 7,000 namebearing types), and some 1000 new lots of specimens are accumulated annually. The USNPC serves a 

diverse and global constituency, providing access to specimens and databases for research programs 

within the Smithsonian, the USDA, and other organizations that drive parasitological research in 

systematics biodiversity and climate change science. The collections also meshes with the National 

Zoological Park and the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute’s efforts to strengthen Smithsonian 

programs in wildlife health. 

[Image: Specimens in the U.S. National Parasite Collection]