Mr. Small At The Smithsonian

By Lev Grossman Sunday, Apr. 29, 2001
    • Matschie's tree kangaroo is a 2-ft.-tall marsupial with a pink nose and a fuzzy golden belly. Its future is uncertain in its native New Guinea, where rain forests are dwindling and the locals hunt it for food, but 22 are alive and breeding on 3,200 acres of wooded hills in northern Virginia. Unfortunately for Matschie's tree kangaroo, that refuge itself is now on the endangered list.

    When the Smithsonian announced that it was closing its Conservation & Research Center (CRC), where veterinarians and biologists work to preserve the rarest species, scientists recognized the handiwork of Lawrence Small, the Institution's controversial secretary who has been ruffling feathers--not all of them on stuffed emus--since he took office last year.

    Small inherited a vast and (literally) crumbling empire of 16 museums and galleries, 142 million artifacts--ranging from the Wright brothers' biplane to Nancy Reagan's silk-satin Inaugural gown--nine research centers and the National Zoo. Unlike his predecessors, however, Small is neither a scientist nor an academic. He spent 27 years at Citibank, and his last job was COO of Fannie Mae. He plays flamenco guitar and owns a world-class collection of Amazonian art, but he got the job because he knows how to raise money and crunch numbers. His mission was to put the world's largest museum complex on a sound financial footing.

    Crunch he did. Small is reorganizing the Smithsonian from top to bottom, replacing its quasi-academic structure with a sleek, corporate-style hierarchy. He also launched an aggressive fund-raising campaign that netted $206.6 million last year. "I didn't come here to preside over a gradual decline," Small told TIME. "We need to bring the Smithsonian into the 21st century." He pulled off several very public--and costly--coups, including the rental of two Chinese pandas for $10 million and the acquisition of a George Washington portrait for $30 million.

    Which makes it all the more difficult for scientists to accept the loss of the CRC. The center's budget this year was $5.2 million--about the price of a single panda. "Scientists are wondering what the hell is going on," says the CRC's Chris Wemmer. At a rancorous meeting at the National Museum of Natural History last month, somebody shouted at Small, "What do you know about science? You're a banker!"

    Well, yes. Small defends the cuts, which include several other offices and roughly 180 jobs. He points out that the Smithsonian manages a wide range of scientific activities, from the Astrophysical Observatory to the Tropical Research Institute. "I'm not doctrinaire. We'll discuss it, and it could change. It's a question of how to marshal our resources. I'd like us to be really great in four or five areas. Meanwhile, we have to make some hard choices."

    Those choices still have to get by the Smithsonian's Board of Regents, which meets next Monday, and through Congress, where the CRC has some passionate supporters. At stake, they say, is the mission of the 155-year-old institution: Is it a place where people do science or go to look at it? "The big challenge here," says Small, "is we've got to get a story about science that's completely understandable. To get money in wholesale amounts, you have to sell concepts." In other words, more giant pandas and fewer tree kangaroos.