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An initial sum of $35,000 has been identified within the budget of the Assistant Secretary for External Affairs to provide for the consultant's fee and travel expenses. More money for this effort is currently not budgeted for fiscal year 1989. It is agreed, however, the acquiring foreign currencies is part of the Institution's development function and additional resources may be required.

Proposed Projects

The Smithsonian Institution has been committed for 142 years to research, to the conservation of nature and human cultures, and to the diffusion of the knowledge acquired. As one result, the Institution maintains the world's largest collection of cultural artifacts and natural history specimens. The study of these collections is essential to an understanding of the origins of the earth and of life, as well as to an understanding of the rich variety of human cultures. That understanding guides conservation of those cultures and of the Earth's limited natural resources.

Nineteenth-century Smithsonian exploration of North America inspired related studies in Central and South America of natural history and American Indian cultures. To joint archeological studies have been added studies of tropical rain forest ecosystems. Since World War II, comparative studies around the world have extended research in the Western Hemisphere in geology and systematic and environmental biology. Such studies of foreign areas were advanced at an early date when the Institution received collections from U.S. Government-sponsored expeditions such as the circumnavigation of the globe by naval officer Charles Wilkes in 1838-1842, and the voyages of Commodore Matthew Perry to Japan in 1846 and 1854. To Smithsonian studies of American art has been added study of oriental art through the endowed donations of Charles Lang Freer in 1924 and of Arthur M. Sackler in 1987. The endowed Joseph Hirshhorn art collection was added in 1966. The National Museum of African Art was established in 1979. International research that is not collection based is pursued by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts and at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. In the two-year period 1985-86, the Smithsonian engaged in more than 1,800 foreign area exchanges and research activities. They involved 146 nations and Antarctica.

However, Smithsonian research funds presently being spent from appropriated and non-appropriated funds in most countries would have to be pooled to provide a fund large enough to merit pursuit of foreign currency purchases. What attracts the Institution to the use of foreign debt is the potential for [[underlined]] expanding [[/underlined]] research activity, especially as now envisioned for example in Brazil, Guyana and the Philippines. Details of proposed projects in these countries follow as Exhibits I, II and III.

Next Steps

Once actions 1 through 4 outlined above have been accomplished, the Assistant Secretary for External Affairs and the Treasurer will likely propose to the Regents setting up a "dollar/foreign currency pool" to be drawn upon by researchers. Funding for this pool would come from donations or be reprogrammed from already-budgeted project funds as Institutional contingencies have