US Government Collections and Curators

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Daniel Grant has an interesting article posted on the Huffington Post about the large number of US Government collections, many based in Washington DC and the curators who manage and maintain the collections. The collections are extremely wide, and cover much of past material culture.  The collections are held by indivdiual agencies, such as the GSA, Treasury, and the Department of the Interior as well as the White House collection and those held by Congress.

It is interesting reading about the different collection, the sheer size and amount of items held by the US Government. 

Grant reports

The General Services Administration's collection -- 24,000 paintings, prints and sculptures, dating from the 1850s to the present, all of which were new when commissioned by the agency -- is placed in federal buildings around the country. If any history is told through these artworks, it is the development of American art over the past century and a half rather than of the agency. The Department of the Interior, which oversees the Bureau of Indian Affairs (more than five and a half million items in that collection), the National Parks Service (120 million items), Fish and Wildlife Service (five and a half million objects), U.S. Geological Survey (more than 40,000 items) and several other bureaus, has the largest of all these federal collections, which are housed in museums and federal offices throughout the country. "We have so much stuff, and no one will ever see it all," Terry Childs, museum program manager in the Department of Interior, said.

Displays of a particular federal collection are peculiar to the particular government institution. Among the items on display at the House of Representatives, for example, is a baseball card for Wilmer "Vinegar Bend" Mizell, who had an 11-year career in the major leagues, pitching for St. Louis, Pittsburgh and the Mets (1952-62) before serving three terms (1969-75) as a Republican Congressman from North Carolina. "It illuminates the possibility that any citizen could be here and do this," said Farar Elliott, curator of the House of Representatives. Another revealing exhibition item is a congressman's desk from 1857, when the House of Representatives moved into its new chambers.

Click HERE to read the full article.