Director: Brent D. Glass
Total Full-Time Employees: 200
Annual Budget (federal and trust) FY 2008: $36 million
Approximate Number of Artifacts/Specimens: 3 million
Visitors (2006): 2.5 million

Background
The museum opened in January 1964 as the National Museum of History and Technology. In October 1980, the name was changed to the National Museum of American History to more accurately reflect its scope of interests and responsibilities. The museum is located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., near the Washington Monument.

Collections
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History is responsible for the collection, care and preservation of more than 3 million objects. The collections represent the nation’s heritage in the areas of science, technology, sociology and culture. The collections include first ladies gowns, a Samuel Morse telegraph, locomotives, tools, an Alexander Graham Bell telephone, flags, American-made quilts, Muhammad Ali’s boxing gloves, Duke Ellington’s sheet music and presidential artifacts.

The museum reopened to the public in November 2008 after a two-year architectural renovation. The renovation project addressed three specific areas: the building of a new gallery for the Star-Spangled Banner, the flag that inspired the National Anthem; architecture; and infrastructure and public amenities.

• Star-Spangled Banner: An abstract flag, approximately 40 feet long and up to 19 feet high, soars above the entrance to the new Star-Spangled Banner gallery and is the new central focal point of the second floor. Visitors to the gallery can experience the 30-by-34 wool and cotton flag in a new setting with floor-to-ceiling glass windows designed to evoke the “dawn’s early light” by which Francis Scott Key saw the flag, still flying above Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor in 1814.
• Architecture:The museum features a central core atrium with a new skylight that dramatically opens the building and a grand staircase connects the museum’s first and second floors. Extensive 10-foot-high “artifact walls” on both the first and second floors showcase the breadth of the museum’s 3 million objects, and a Welcome Center on the second floor helps orient visitors to the museum. On the first floor, there is an exhibition gallery for the museum’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation; a new lobby for the 275-seat Carmichael Auditorium; and new retail operations.
• Infrastructure and Public Amenities: The renovation work included replacing and relocating public and staff elevators, resulting in improved access to the lower level and the three exhibition floors; the creation of several new restrooms, including four family restrooms; replacement of heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems at the central core; fire- and alarm-system upgrades; and electrical-system and security improvements.
• The museum contracted with the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP and Turner Construction for the overall planning, design and construction. New York-based design firms Chermayeff & Geismar and C&G Partners provided the exhibition design for the new Star-Spangled Banner gallery.

About the Museum
The National Museum of American History collects and preserves American heritage in the areas of social, political, cultural, scientific and military history. For more information, visit the museum’s Web site at http://americanhistory.si.edu or call Smithsonian Information at (202) 633-1000,

SI-30B-2008