Spencer Crew, director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, has become the fifth museum chief to step down since controversial Lawrence Small became head of the institution more than a year and half ago.
The taxpayer-funded Smithsonian, the world’s largest museum and research complex, has 16 museums, of which 13 are administered by full-time directors.
The head of the Smithsonian’s National Zoo also departed.
Crew, one of the ranking African-American museum officials in the nation, said he was leaving under amicable circumstances to become head of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati.
“I have been talking to the Freedom Center about this for several months,” he said. “It’s a dream job. And I am from Ohio–from Cleveland.”
Small, a former business executive who is the first non-academic to head the Smithsonian, has been the center of controversy since he took office in January 2000.
He proposed and then was compelled to abandon plans to close a world-famous wildlife conservation center and is under investigation by the federal government for ownership of an African art collection believed to contain illegal endangered species artifacts.
Smithsonian scientists and research scholars have asked Chief Justice William Rehnquist and the other Smithsonian Regents to reconsider their hiring of Small because, they say, he is commercializing the institution at the expense of its research programs.
A rally of Smithsonian employees protesting Small’s policies had been scheduled for last week but was postponed because of the terrorist attacks.
Small has stirred controversy over accepting $38 million from entrepreneur Catherine Reynolds to create a “hall of achievers” in Crew’s museum that would feature celebrities and fortune-builders like herself. He also took $80 million from California real estate developer Ken Behring that was to have been used, in part, to create another such hall.
Small also accepted $10 million from General Motors to create a hall of transportation history named for the automotive giant.
Crew was compelled to shelve plans for a center to study race, gender and class conflict in America after Small’s arrival.
