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GW – Smithsonian
pArtnership BroAdens
Columbian College students and faculty have unprecedented access to
the world’s largest museum complex thanks to a new memorandum
of understanding with the Smithsonian Institution. The agreement, signed
in July, expands existing ties between the museum and the departments of
biology, anthropology, American studies, and museum studies, and includes a
research fund for joint projects.
Left to right: Provost Steven Lerman, Dean Peg Barratt, and President Steven
Knapp with Smithsonian Institution Secretary Wayne Clough (sitting to the
right of Knapp) and other Smithsonian representatives
“This marks a new chapter in our ongoing association with the Smithsonian
Institution to advance learning and discovery,” said Columbian College Dean
Peg Barratt. “From internships for our museum studies and art history students to
our collaboration with Smithsonian curators on special exhibits involving the
evolution of the primate brain and the biological lineage of dinosaurs, we are
proud of the partnerships we have reaffirmed with the Smithsonian.”
Columbian College and the Smithsonian have an extensive history of collaboration,
including a more than century-long partnership with the Department
of Biological Sciences. Within the department, Museum of Natural History
curators have served as graduate research directors and advisory committee
members. And access to Smithsonian collections assists GW researchers in areas
ranging from spiders to dinosaurs.
Columbian College’s Museum Studies Program, meanwhile, has worked jointly
with the Smithsonian for 40 years. Eight Smithsonian professionals are also members
of the Museum Studies faculty, and hundreds of students have benefited from
Smithsonian internships in collections management, museum administration, and
exhibition design and development.
columbian college of arts and sciences news page 10
The Hominid Paleobiology Graduate Program
in the Department of Anthropology cooperates
with the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural
History on ongoing research in systematics,
evolution of the primate brain, dental
morphology, and the evolution of gait.
Students and faculty have access to one of the
world’s greatest collections of hominid fossils
and skeletal specimens, a collaboration that
helped produce the Smithsonian’s new Hall
of Origins exhibit.
In American Studies, Smithsonian curators
teach a course in American Material Culture.
Additionally, the Department of Fine Arts and
Art History uses the galleries of the Hirshhorn
Museum and Sculpture Garden for classes.
Dean Barratt envisions further avenues for
partnership going forward. “Our Department
of History is looking into student internship
opportunities and exhibit collaboration with
the Museum of the American Indian and the
National Museum of African Art,” she noted.
“And other opportunities continue to emerge.”
At the ceremony to sign the new memorandum,
Wayne Clough, secretary of the Smithsonian
Institution, noted that 400 of the Smithsonian’s
1,200 interns over the past two years have
been GW students. “They enrich us,” he said.
“Hopefully some will come back to work here.”
Clough said the new agreement continues
the relationship between “two great D.C.
institutions, both with a long proud history
in our nation’s capital. This [agreement] lets
us energize our relationship and establish
additional partnerships with greater ease and
flexibility, advancing research and education
for another 100 years.”