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[[underline]]Museum Support Center[[/underline]]

The Secretary referred to his past invitations to a number of the Regents to visit the Museum of Natural History for a tour behind the scenes.  Such a visit would acquaint the Regents with the everyday appearances of the Museum's research, conservation and storage facilities and would be indispensible to their understanding and support of our need for a museum support center.  Mr. Ripley extended the invitation to our new Regents too and hoped that arrangements could be made for such a visit.

This legislation has been discussed in the past in hearings before Senator Pell's Subcommittee and he has been supportive in his understanding about our needs for conservation.

The Secretary asked Assistant Secretary Perrot to highlight and summarize where we are in this effort.

On September 19, 1975, the President signed into law P.L. 94-98 authorizing the Regents of the Smithsonian Institution to prepare plans for museum support facilities.  These facilities are intended to restore a significant amount of Mall building space to public use (more than 14% of exhibit space in one museum alone is now closed off for storage of collections purposes); to provide adequately for the long-range care and use of the Institution's collections; to provide associated research and study space; and to incorporate areas for conservation of the collections, related training, and the dissemination of conservation information.