Strange Smithsonian fact

Factual Questions
1

I heard that the Smithsonian has (or had) over 24,000 stuffed woodpeckers. Does anyone have any idea whether this is true, an urban legend, or what?

Pardon how outrageous this is…

2

Given that the Smithsonian’s nickname is “The Nation’s Attic”, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.

I think even the Field Museum in Chicago probably has several thousand.

3

From http://www.nmnh.si.edu/vert/birds/birds.html

I didn’t find a number for woodpeckers. They are members of the family Picidae, if you want to search their database and add’em up.

4

Down on a lower floor, they have (or at least, had) a stuffed Passenger Pigeon. It looks like… a pigeon.

5

I would imagine that the Piocchio Museum in Milan would lay claim to the world’s largest collection of woodpeckers.

6

Having worked for the Smithsonian, I can relate a few other observations to you.

  • The Smithsonian, by virtue of the trust fund set up by Englishman James Smithson, has a unique status within the federal government. It is roughly one-half trust-funded and one-half government funded. Appropriations are still made to the Smithsonian by Congress, with this odd arrangement in mind. High-status employees are on the government-benefit program. Chumps (like I was) were “trust” employees, as in “I trust we won’t run out of money this winter, or you’re the first to go.” Most of the Smithsonian exists underground, much accessable by tunnel, and most of the Smithsonian’s vast holdings are held out of sight of the public, either there or in more remote places. Unlike the National Archives, which has a duty to show what they have to you, the Smithsonian has an Ivory-Tower approach to its holdings–all is theoretically available to practically anyone, but it is enshrouded in veil upon veil of bureaucracy which makes the viewing of many items a matter of personal approach to the person(s) who keep such items safe.

  • The Smithsonian frequently makes deals with very rich, very esoteric folks around the world. Many museums within the Smith are actually primarily funded by sub-trust funds–with their own quirky arrangements. Most notorious is the Freer Gallery of Art. A large part of the fund was directed specifically toward acquisitions. A separate clause in the fund agreement requires that the artifacts can only be displayed within the Freer. As a result, the Freer has one of the largest acquisition budgets for Asian art (they can’t pick up anything else, also by arrangement) of any museum in America. However, if each artifact were displayed for six months, it would take some two hundred years to display it all, and the collection is still growing yearly. I personally witnessed a never-ending stream of annoyed academics trying to make arrangements to see some of the rarest artifacts from Asia. Included in the collection are some of the earliest iron hand tools (which were apparently crafted from meterorite debris). You likely can’t see it without a really good explanation–I never did.

  • Similarly, the Air and Space Museum has the largest collection of air/space craft in the world. The facility set up for it can’t hold a tenth part of their holdings. Most of it is held, in varying stages of decrepitude, at the Paul Garber Facility in Maryland. These you can see, with some serious finangling. If you’re from out of town, I strongly suggest utilizing you Congressman’s staff to make the arrangements; those folks don’t get bumped from the list of guests–usually about twenty to thirty people per session. Supposedly all of these fine things, including most of the odd German late-WWII jet and rocket aircraft, will be sent to a larger facility at Dulles Airport.

It is obvious that I am digressing into minutiae. The bottom line is this: the Smithsonian is a vacuum cleaner of important artifacts. All of these artifacts are theoretically viewable by any American citizen, and anyone else who asks nicely, for that matter. But even though the entire center of my fair city has aritfacts on display, for free, to anyone, the entirety is only partially represented at the museums. They don’t much like to lend ('cause they often don’t get them back), but most of the collection can be seen, somewhere, if you try hard enough. I’m sure there are 40,000 stuffed woodpeckers in there somewhere. You’ll likely have to make some friends inside to see them.

7

::chuckle:: Humorous, but doubtful. Perhaps the Witchita Pinocchio (notice the N in the word? :))museum, but in Milan they would know (italian being their language, and all) that Pinocchio means “Wooden-nose” or “Wooden-nosed boy” or something similar.

–Tim