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COLLECTION HIGHLIGHTS
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NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AMERICAN HISTORY

MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL ARTIFACTS ADDED TO NATIONAL SPORTS COLLECTION

The National Museum of American History 

added more than a dozen significant artifacts 

from the careers of Major League Baseball 

players Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Ted Williams, 

Stan Musial, Yogi Berra, Brooks Robinson, and 

Ozzie Smith to the national sports collection 

during a special donation ceremony. 

The collection is a gift from private collector 

Thomas Tull who is the founder, chairman and 

CEO of Tulco and the founding chairman and 

former CEO of Legendary Entertainment. The 

artifacts include baseball jerseys, gloves, bats, 

and other objects used by these baseball legends

that represent six of the major league teams 

they played with during their tenure. 

One of the significant objects in the collection is 

a baseball signed by the 1927 New York Yankees 

team, including Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, which won the World Series that year. Also from the New York 

Yankees are a bat and glove used by Berra in the 1950s. The Boston Red Sox are represented by a hat and jersey 

used by Williams; the San Francisco Giants with a hat, glove, and shoes worn by Mays; the Baltimore Orioles 

with a glove used by Robinson; the Milwaukee Braves with a glove and bat used by Aaron; and the St. Louis 

Cardinals with a jersey and glove worn by Smith as well as Musial’s jersey. 

“Baseball, the nation’s first popular team spectator sport, has had a long and lasting impact on our nation’s 

cultural consciousness,” said John Gray, the Elizabeth MacMillan Director of the National Museum of American 

History. “It does so in a way that is both unique and vital. The players and teams represented in this donation 

are called legends for a reason. Thanks to the passion and generosity of Thomas Tull, these objects are now 

national treasures that belong to all of us.” 

These 14 objects from America’s favorite pastime will join the museum’s sports collection, which includes 

autographed baseballs, a ticket booth from the original Yankee Stadium, uniforms and equipment, including 

Roberto Clemente’s batting helmet and jersey, and other historically important artifacts representing all aspects 

of the sport.

NATIONAL ZOOLOGICAL PARK

DAMA GAZELLE BABY BOOM

The Cheetah Conservation Station at the Smithsonian’s National Zoological Park is celebrating a baby boom of 

critically endangered dama gazelles. The Zoo announced the birth of the first calf, a male born to 10-year-old 

female Adara, on September 7. The second calf, a female, was born overnight on September 16 to 8-year-old 

Fahima. The third and final calf, a male, was born on September 18 to 7-year-old female Zafirah. All three 

calves were sired by the Zoo’s 3-year-old male, Edem.

Ray Mabus, Mike Heffner, Thomas Tull, John Gray and Eric Jentsch at the 

donation ceremony of objects to National Museum of American History’s 

national sports collection by board member Thomas Tull 
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Keepers are closely monitoring the calves, who 

appear to be healthy, nursing regularly, and growing 

and behaving normally. For the next several weeks, 

the calves will remain in a quiet, off-exhibit area 

where they can bond with their mothers and 

acclimate to the habitat. They will make their public 

debut in mid-to-late October, weather permitting. 

Visitors can see Edem at the Cheetah Conservation 

Station in the morning before 10 a.m. 

Native to Chad, Mali and Niger, dama gazelles are 

listed as critically endangered by the International 

Union for Conservation of Nature. Less than 500 

dama gazelles remain in the wild due to habitat loss 

from human and livestock expansion, hunting and 

drought. SCBI conducts veterinary and reproductive 

research in order to maintain dama gazelle populations.

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION SUPPORTS EMERGENCY EFFORTS IN THE U.S. AND ABROAD

FEMA and the Smithsonian Institution co-sponsor the Heritage Emergency National Task Force (“HENTF”), a 

partnership of more than 50 national service organizations and federal agencies created to protect cultural 

heritage from the damaging effects of 

natural disasters and other emergencies. 

HENTF has established a Facebook page 

dedicated to sharing information related to 

arts, cultural, and heritage organizations 

that have been affected by the recent 

Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and José. The page 

serves as an online bulletin board to share 

preparedness and response information. 

The Preparedness and Response in 

Collections Emergencies (“PRICE”) team is a 

pan-Institutional body that serves as the 

Smithsonian’s collections emergency 

support team. The purpose of PRICE is 

twofold: to advise and provide subject-matter expertise, consultation, and assistance to the National Collections 

Program (“NCP”), Smithsonian collecting units, and Smithsonian senior management; and, when activated, to 

provide collections support, response, and recovery as requested by NCP, as part of the Smithsonian’s 

Emergency Operations Center.

Four PRICE members recently participated in outreach efforts in the U.S. and abroad. Becky Kaczkowski and 

Cathy Hawks presented on risk mitigation for collections as it relates to climate change at the Society for the 

Preservation of Natural History Collections (“SPNH”). SPNHC is an international society whose mission is to 

improve the preservation, conservation and management of natural history collections to ensure their 

continuing value to society.

A female calf (left) was born Sept. 16 to mother Fahima. A male calf 

(right) was born Sept. 18 to mother Zafirah.

The Rockport Center for the Arts, an art center and 10,000-square-foot sculpture 

park near Corpus Christi, TX has sustained serious external damage. While this 

museum is not a Smithsonian Affiliate, there are 11 affiliate museums in Texas.
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Becca Kennedy and Katie Wagner traveled to Peru with members of Smithsonian’s Office of Safety, Health, and 

Environmental Management to discuss fire prevention and recovery techniques for collections. 

COLLECTIONS CARE AND PRESERVATION FUNDS AWARDED TO NOTABLE PROJECTS

Since FY 2006, the Smithsonian’s annual Federal appropriation has included central funding to address critical 

Institution-wide needs in collections care and preservation. The Collections Care and Preservation Fund 

(“CCPF”), managed by the National Collections Program, provides funding to projects that support the 

Smithsonian’s Strategic Plan goal of ensuring the preservation of the world’s natural and cultural heritage, while 

optimizing the Institution’s assets; maintaining the utility of its collections in perpetuity; and taking more 

sustainable approaches to the preservation, storage, and management of Smithsonian collections by fostering 

interdisciplinary collaboration and risk-based decision-making. CCPF funding is available to eligible units on a 

competitive basis.

In FY 2017, a number of Smithsonian collecting units received awards. The Archives of American Art (“AAA”) 

received a CCPF award for the project “Digital Reformatting of Oral History Program Video.” The award 

completes the conservation digital reformatting of audiovisual media within AAA's Oral History Program. This 

project specifically addresses the preservation of sixteen video interviews totaling approximately 134 hours, 

representing a diverse group of artists. 

The National Air and Space Museum (“NASM”) was awarded CCPF funding for the project “Conservation Triage 

V, Stabilization Treatment for Objects Identified as Requiring Immediate Treatment.” The award supports 

NASM's continuing efforts to perform conservation treatments on 474 objects identified in the FY 2009 to FY

2016 CCPF-funded collection surveys as being in poor condition and needing immediate treatment. This award 

will support two NTE conservators to perform triage treatments on 474 actively deteriorating objects.

The National Museum of Natural History received an award for the project “Conservation and Physical Curation 

of the Grasses (Poaceae).” The award supports significant conservation, curation, specimen reconciliation, and 

accountability for the Department of Botany’s largest 

and most important collection, the grass family 

(Poaceae). This project will improve the conservation of 

individual specimens through mounting and repair, 

resolve a longstanding problem involving substandard 

housing materials, provide improved physical access to 

a collection of more than 500,000 specimens, modernize 

the taxonomic finding aids for this family, prepare the 

collection for long-term management of digital 

surrogates, and continue pioneering efforts in museum 

collection digitization for preservation. 

The National Postal Museum received funding for the 

project “Conservation of 1933 World's Fair Postal 

History.” The award supports conservation treatment of 

55 blueprints from the 1933 World’s Fair held in Chicago 

and post-treatment imaging to ensure their long-term 

care and accessibility for researchers. This project 

specifically addresses unknown and undocumented 

In 1933, the city of Chicago staged its second world’s fair, A 

Century of Progress, to celebrate its centennial. The U.S. Post 

Office Department issued three stamp designs for the 1933 fair, 

with seven varieties.
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provenance information on permanent collection objects, currently inaccessible in the blueprints due to their 

fragile condition. The funds will support the hiring of a contract conservator/conservation studio to perform 

conservation treatments and post-treatment preservation imaging.