  We discuss the development of an angular-momentum-conserving variant of the
Density Matrix Renormalization Group (DMRG) method for use in large-scale
shell-model calculations of atomic nuclei and report a first application of the
method to the ground state of $^{56}$Ni and improved results for $^{48}$Cr. In
both cases, we see a high level of agreement with the exact results. A
comparison of the two shows a dramatic reduction in the fraction of the space
required to achieve accuracy as the size of the problem grows.
