Viewing page 171 of 260

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

35

The extensive collections of graphic and archival materials distributed throughout the curatorial divisions of the Museum were put under the care of an archivist hired at the end of the calendar year. Likewise, this year the Museum was able to renew the staff charge directly, with the care of the artifactual collections, by restoring curatorships long vacant and lost to attrition. The Museum's archives will be further developed into a center for the study and dissemination fo information on our American heritage.

During the next five years, the most dynamic changes in the Museum will take place in its exhibits spaces. Inmediately following the George Washington exhibition, reinstallations on the second floor will focus on collections documenting American cultural, social, and political history. After FY 1983, upgrading of other exhibitions areas will concentrate on science, industry, and communications in America.  Several special exhibit areas have been designated to accomodate a continuing series of high impact smaller exhibits. The renovated spaces will incorporate not only new historical concepts and ideas but also innovate exhibition techniques. Increasing emphasis will be placed on human aspects of the making and use of objects in an effort to make the collections more relevant and meaningful to varied audiences. In connection with these improved installations, the Museum will produce a variety of education publications, self-guiding tour materials, and informative audiovisual presentations to involve the public in the Museum's programs.

Complementing these central efforts, each History and Art unit will be seeking to maintain high performance in all program areas, devoting special attetino to selected high priority inititive. For example, over the next several years, every History and Art bureau will continue to emphasize improved management of collections, from computerization of the records at the Museum  of American History, Cooper-Hewitt, and the Archives of American Art, to the creation of loan exhibitions to museum throughout the country from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden collection (including Mr. Hirshhorn's request); and the creation fo a union catalogue of all Smithsonian holdings of materials from Africa at the Museum of African Art. The Archives of American Art, will intesify efforts to speed up processing, cataloguing and microfilming new collections, as well as purchase needed compact storage systems which will expand current storage capability by more than 40 percent. The Anacostia Neighborhood Museum will produce four major exhibits in its present Martin Luther King headquarters facility over the next few years prior to moving its total operations to a new facitly in Fort Stanton. The Division of Performing Arts will be seeking to solidify its productions and programs activities in new and more cost-effective directions. Additional conservation capability will be added to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Museum of American Art, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, and the Freer Gallery of Art, while the Museum of American History, the Portrait Gallery and the Museum of American Art will acquire more badly needed storage equipment and space. Other priorities include funding for exhibitions in all the museums with focus on refurbishing older exhibitions; exhibit cataloguesl leaflets and checklists