Smithsonian Institution careers
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James Smithson never once set foot on American soil, and he left the country his entire estate. The British scientist's legacy arrived at the Philadelphia mint in 1838 as more than 100,000 gold sovereigns, recoined at over $500,000, a sum equal to about one sixty-sixth of the whole federal budget of the day. After eight years of sometimes heated debate, President James K. Polk signed the act establishing the Smithsonian Institution on August 10, 1846. A Board of Regents and a Secretary administer the trust. Twenty-one museums, the National Zoo, and nine research facilities carry the name now.
Those twenty-one museums, the research facilities, and the National Zoo are where the jobs sit: curatorial and collections work, research across the sciences, the arts, and the humanities, education, and the operations that keep public buildings open. Because the Institution is a trust rather than a cabinet department, governance runs through the Board of Regents and the Secretary.