Changes at the Smithsonian

The board of regents of the Smithsonian Institution has appointed G. Wayne Clough as its new secretary, effective July 1. Trained as a civil engineer, Clough has been president of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta for 14 years. He replaces Lawrence Small, who resigned last year after a financial scandal involving extravagant personal spending. Faced with a $2.5 billion deficit, the institution is looking to Clough to fill its coffers and boost its damaged public and scholarly image and crumbling infrastructure. At Georgia Tech, he increased research support to $425 million from $212 million and raised nearly $1.5 billion in private gifts. The Smithsonian is reining in expenditures. As reported in the New York Times, while Small's salary had risen to over $900,000 during his seven-year tenure, CIough's salary package will be worth $551,186 (the base salary is $490,000).

In anticipation of the appointment, Ned Rifkin, the Smithsonian's under-secretary for art since 2004, resigned on Apr. 11. He told the press he was stepping down to allow the new secretary the opportunity to restructure. Rifkin was responsible for overseeing the National Portrait Gallery, the Freer and Sackler galleries, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the National Museum of African Art, the American Art Museum and Renwick Gallery, the Archives of American Art, the Smithsonian Photography Initiative, and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York. Prior to the Smithsonian appointment, which was a newly created position, Rifkin had been director of the Hirshhorn.

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