Lack of Funds Halts Smithsonian’s Traveling Show

The Smithsonian Institution announced Monday that it is curtailing the schedule of its popular 150th-anniversary touring show because of a lack of funds.

“America’s Smithsonian,” believed to be the nation’s largest museum exhibition, has been put on hiatus until April. It was launched in February in Los Angeles amid great fanfare and made stops in five other cities, staying at least a month in each. In its first year, 2 million people saw the display. Attendance ranged from an average of 15,000 a day in St. Paul, Minn., to 4,200 a day in New York City.

However, the project, one of the Smithsonian’s first broad efforts to attract corporate sponsors, fell far short of its stated goal of raising $100 million from 10 donors. As a result, Smithsonian officials are asking interested cities to underwrite the installation costs for any future visits. Only those cities that come up with the estimated $4.2-million tab will see the show, which had been scheduled to run through the end of this year.

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The traveling show contains 300 one-of-a-kind artifacts from the Smithsonian’s vast holdings, including George Washington’s sword, Abraham Lincoln’s hat, Thomas Edison’s light bulb, the Apollo 14 space capsule and the ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in “The Wizard of Oz.”

Smithsonian Secretary I. Michael Heyman also announced Monday that, for only the second time in recent years, the museum will post an admission charge for an upcoming show.

The Smithsonian, like other private and public cultural agencies, is undergoing a fundamental change in the ways it raises money. With federal dollars for the museum unlikely to increase, the complex has had to call on the private sector for help with physical expansion and special projects. In addition, it has begun to rely on municipal bond issues for some of its larger construction projects.

The touring exhibition was scheduled to be in Dallas now, but Heyman said officials there had asked that the city be shifted to the end of the run to give them more time to raise the necessary money. Of the six cities that were on this year’s calendar, Heyman said, only Portland, Ore., will definitely see the show at this point. He said he is optimistic that an agreement would be reached with Birmingham, Ala., and that the financing prospects for Columbus, Ohio, and San Jose, Calif., had “potential.” But an announced stop in Chicago, he said, is now doubtful.

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Though the museum has always been loath to charge admission, Heyman confirmed Monday that it will charge $4 for adult admission to “Amber: Window to the Past” when the show opens at the Museum of Natural History in June. “I don’t see this becoming a habit,” he said. There will be six days during the run when no admission will be charged. The last Smithsonian show to carry an admission charge was “Dinamation’s Dinosaurs: Alive and in Color” in 1990.