Viewing page 156 of 242

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

-33-

from its endowment has seriously impaired the ability to purchase important works needed to fill gaps in the collections. Consequently, funds are requested in our FY 1981 budget to begin to remedy this problem. With the dramatic increase in the market price of American art and portraits, the Portrait Gallery, in particular, has a strong need for increased acquisition funds. Because of its recent establishment as the only museum of its kind in the county, it bears a unique responsibility in the area of developing national collections of portraits of significant figures in American history. For its part, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden will observe its tenth anniversary in 1984 with a major anniversary exhibition and a scholarly publication relating to aspects of the Museum's collections. 

To meet the goals outlined for the next five years, it will be necessary throughout History and Art to add staff positions, primarily in collections management and conservation, in exhibits, and in subject areas where important collections are now untended. To this end, budgetary adjustments within bases will be made and some new resources, both federal and trust, will be sought. 

[[underlined]]Collections Management.[[/underlined]] Priority continues to be given to collections acquisitions and management. At the Museum of History and Technology, activities related to the inventory of collections were completed in the Divisions of Physical Sciences, Music, and Transportation, with projects underway in nine other collecting areas. Approximately 80,000 objects have been recorded in FY 1979. Plans call for the physical inventory of the collections to be completed by the end of 1983. Of equal importance, a Conservation Division within the Museum of History and Technology was established in FY 1979, giving the Museum a basic competence to care for the physical well-being of the objects under its control.

At the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York, some 65,000 objects in the Decorative Arts and the Prints and Drawings Departments have been inventoried and recorded in FY 1979. It is anticipated that this first inventory of the entire collection of some 300,000 objects also will be completed in FY 1983. In addition, the Museum has now developed a capability for textile conservation, and by FY 1981 will also have a paper conservation laboratory in operation. 

Plans call for the highest standards of collection control to be achieved in all History and Art bureaus by the end of the inventory process. As part of this effort, three Institution-wide surveys are being conducted of prints and drawings, decorative arts, and photographs. These objects are collected and preserved by several Smithsonian museums, and centrally available information about them will improve their usefulness to Smithsonian staff, outside scholars, and the interested public. Both the prints and drawings and the decorative arts surveys will result in published finders' guides within the next two to three years. A program for surveying photographs, by far the largest of these particular

 

Transcription Notes:
Reviewed