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Wanda Wheeler, age 11, of Carson City, Nev., for her question:

HOW WAS THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NAMED?

A nonprofit corporation of scientific, educational and cultural interest in Washington, D.C. is called the Smithsonian Institution. The federally charted organization was started when a British scientist named James Smithson left his fortune to the United States in 1829.

Smithson gave more than $500,000 to found an establishment for the "increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." On August 10, 1846, the United States Congress established the Smithsonian Institution and named it after Smithson.

Governing the Smithsonian is a board of regents made up of the chief justice and vice president of the United States, three members each of the Senate and the House of Representatives, and nine private citizens appointed by a joint resolution of Congress.

The executive officer of the Smithsonian is an appointed secretary who directs all of the organization's many activities.

Included as part of the Smithsonian Institution complex are a number of excellent museums. The National Air and Space Museum records all of the United States' air and space flight developments. The National Museum of History and Technology houses collections representing American cultural, civil and military history, as well as scientific and technological advances. These museums are located in Washington, D.C.

On the artistic side, the Smithsonian operates the National Gallery of Art, the National Collection of Fine Arts, the National Portrait Gallery, the Freer Gallery of Art and the outstanding Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. These galleries are in Washington, D.C.

Also part of the organization is the Cooper Hewitt Museum of Decorative Arts and Design, in New York City. Here are displayed more than 85,000 items of decorative art.

Other branches of the Smithsonian are also outside Washington, D.C., such as the Radiation Biology Laboratory at Rockville, Md., and the Astrophysical Observative in Cambridge, Mass.

One of the Smithsonian's branches is located in the Panama Canal Zone. It is the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, where tropical biology, especially the evolution of behavior patterns and ecological adaptations among marine and land wildlife, are studied.

As the nation's tribute to Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president, Congress established through the Smithsonian an organization called the International Center for Scholars. Its fellowship program is devoted to scholarship in contemporary and emerging issues, and to fostering closer ties between scholars and statesmen.

A national cultural center and memorial to President John Kennedy is the Smithsonian's John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C.

Concerts, operas, plays, dance performances, lectures and other programs are regularly presented at the Kennedy Center.

 

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