Nader Criticizes Smithsonian Head For Proposed Naming Rights Deal With General Motors

[Gary Ruskin]

Commercial Alert				July 19, 2001

Following is today's statement regarding the Smithsonian Institution's
offer to sell the naming rights of its new transportation hall to
General Motors.

NEWS RELEASE

For Immediate Release:		For More Information Contact:
Thursday, July 19, 2001		Gary Ruskin (503) 235-8012

Nader Criticizes Smithsonian Head For Proposed Naming Rights Deal With
General Motors

Following a news report that the Smithsonian Institution has offered
General Motors the right to name the museum's new transportation hall
for $10 million, Ralph Nader said that Smithsonian Secretary Lawrence
Small "seems to recognize no limits to the commercialization of this
historic, non-profit, taxpayer-supported institution. To let GM pay for,
be associated with and influential over a transportation exhibit, given
its decades long record of criminal convictions, buying up and
displacing mass transit systems, producing unsafe and polluting cars, is
to confess to a complete abdication of any standards of museum integrity
and independence."

The New York Times reported today that "one name under discussion" by
the Smithsonian for the hall is the "General Motors Hall of
Transportation." 

"There should be a congressional investigation into the numerous
corporate payolas and alliances in recent years with the Smithsonian in
order to determine how to disentangle this storied Washington
institution from the tenacles of corporate commercialism," Nader said. 

Nader said that Mr. Small "has once again brought the Smithsonian to the
brink of turning itself into a government-funded Hall of Hucksters."

"If the Smithsonian needs money, it should come either from government
funds or from non-profit foundations with no ax to grind and no desire
for naming rights," Nader said.

"I call upon Mr. Small to reverse this reckless course of action and to
issue a bright-line policy establishing an independent, arms-length
defense against commercial interests."
	
"The Smithsonian does not exist to serve as an extension of corporate
public relations departments," Nader said.

On February 27, Nader and Commercial Alert sent a letter to Mr. Small
regarding an event it conducted with K-Mart which "allowed the
taxpayer-financed Smithsonian Institution to be used to prop up K-Mart
Inc. and its public relations efforts."  The letter asked Mr. Small "
What limits have you set on the commercialization of the Smithsonian?
Would the Smithsonian promote corporations that are polluters? Corporate
felons? Tortfeasors? Corporate welfare recipients? Corporations that pay
no taxes?"  Mr. Small did not reply to the letter.

Mr. Small has faced heavy criticism for his dealings with donors and
willingness to commercialize the Smithsonian. According to the New York
Times, "In an unusual memorandum sent to the Board of Regents in May, a
majority of members of the museum's branch of the congress [of scholars]
accused Lawrence M. Small, the Smithsonian secretary, of jeopardizing
the institution's integrity with agreements he had reached with
multimillion-dollar donors."

"Apparently Mr. Small doesn't understand why it is improper to turn the
Smithsonian into a GM billboard," said Gary Ruskin, executive director
of Commercial Alert.
	
Ralph Nader founded Commercial Alert to keep the commercial culture
within its proper sphere, and to prevent it from exploiting children and
subverting the higher values of family, community, environmental
integrity and democracy.

Commercial Alert's website is at <www.commercialalert.org>.

<----release ends here----->
WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP:
Please send email to Smithsonian Secretary Lawrence Small asking him not
to sell the naming rights to any part of the Smithsonian.  Mr. Small's
email address is <smalllm@si.edu>.

BACKGROUND:	
Following is today's article in the New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/19/national/19MUSE.html

Smithsonian Museum Close to Naming a Hall for G.M.
by Elaine Sciolino

WASHINGTON, July 18 — The Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of
American History has offered General Motors the right to name a new
20,000-square-foot hall of transportation in exchange for a $10 million
gift, museum officials said today.

Spencer Crew, the museum's director, emphasized that the Smithsonian had
not reached a final agreement with G.M. But he described the pending
arrangement as an appropriate and necessary way of updating the museum,
which has many exhibition halls that have not been renovated since it
opened in 1964. 

"In order to do these exhibitions, one has to work with the corporate
world of donors," Dr. Crew said in a telephone interview. "We're all
pretty familiar with this. It is happening everywhere in relations
between public institutions and private donors."

Asked whether General Motors would have any say in the content of the
exhibition, Dr. Crew replied, "Absolutely not."

"The content and preliminary design for the exhibition," he added, "was
a long way in place before any fund-raising was done." 

The new exhibition, whose cost is estimated at $20 million, will be
called "America on the Move" and will be set up in the vast existing
automobile, railroad and maritime halls and in additional space as well.
Dr. Crew said one way of crediting General Motors that was under
discussion would be to add "in the General Motors Hall of
Transportation" under the title. The name would remain for 30 years. 

Bill Noack, a company spokesman, declined to confirm that the amount of
the gift envisioned was $10 million, but said: "Certainly transportation
is a major story in American history, and the one place to tell that
story best is the Smithsonian. It's a story that G.M. is proud to help
it tell. We have an agreement in principle, and we're moving forward."

Mr. Noack added that General Motors would have "zero input" in the
exhibition's content.

The naming of a Smithsonian unit requires approval of the institution's
governing body, the Board of Regents, headed by Chief Justice William H.
Rehnquist. Dr. Crew said that the proposal for the arrangement with G.M.
was presented to the board last month and that he understood that the
Regents reached agreement in principle among themselves then. They will
need to "do a formal recognition of it" when they meet again in
September, he said.

Speculation concerning the arrangement, on which the museum began
negotiating with G.M. about six months ago, started to spread widely
among museum curators and staff members last week. That prompted Dr.
Crew to discuss it on Tuesday at a meeting of the museum's branch of the
Smithsonian- wide Congress of Scholars, a group of curators, scholars
and other researchers. 

In an unusual memorandum sent to the Board of Regents in May, a majority
of members of the museum's branch of the congress accused Lawrence M.
Small, the Smithsonian secretary, of jeopardizing the institution's
integrity with agreements he had reached with multimillion-dollar
donors. 

The memorandum sprang from an announcement in May of a $38 million gift
to the museum by the Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation, on condition that
it finance a hall of fame to honor American achievers. Ms. Reynolds has
made known that among her candidates are the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr., Jonas Salk, Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey, although the
Smithsonian will retain authority over deciding which achievers will be
included.

The pending arrangement with General Motors has added to the criticism
inside the museum of Smithsonian decisions about donor gifts. Some
curators and senior officials believe that at the very least, the naming
of a transportation exhibition hall for a major automobile company
creates an unfortunate perception problem in the minds of a public that
is the chief source of financing for the Smithsonian: the institution
gets about 70 percent of its funds, or nearly half a billion dollars
this year, from Congress. 

"We make it very clear we are professional historians and an exhibition
tells our story, not the sponsor's," said Barney Finn, curator of the
museum's electrical collections, who has worked with corporate donors on
exhibitions. "But putting that name up on top gives the perception that
the corporation is calling the shots." 

Defenders of the arrangement point to precedents within the Smithsonian
system. In 1992, the Museum of Natural History renovated its Insect Zoo
with $500,000 from the Orkin Pest Control Company and renamed it the
Smithsonian's O. Orkin Insect Zoo, for the company's founder.

The Smithsonian's "policy for naming opportunities" states that a
corporate donor is to be "encouraged" to consider choosing the name of
an individual, not the corporation. Dr. Crew said that this option had
been discussed with General Motors but that the company's preference at
this stage was to use its own name.

<-----article ends here----->

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-- 
Gary Ruskin | gary@essential.org 
Commercial Alert | Congressional Accountability Project
http://www.commercialalert.org | http://www.congressproject.org
phone: 503.235.8012