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AMERICAN REVOLUTION BICENTENNIAL PROGRAMS

The Bicentennial of the American Revolution offers the Smithsonian a unique opportunity and an urgent duty. We must use our vast resources, and enlist the resources of others, to help rediscover and illuminate our national achievements. The theme of the Smithsonian's Bicentennial celebration is the American Experience; its purpose will be, in President Nixon's words, "...a new understanding of our heritage."

For this effort, the Institution is providentially well prepared. It is a remarkably comprehensive group of enterprises surveying every aspect of man's life and work -- his social, political, and military institutions; his fine arts, his applied arts, his performing arts; his use of natural resources; and his adventures of exploration on this planet and into outer space. The Smithsonian, as the repository for myriad objects sacred to our history and illustrative of the American Experience since the beginning, is preeminent among the museums of the world and second to none in the number of its visitors.

To meet the challenge of the Bicentennial Era the Smithsonian has formulated a program commensurate with the importance of the occasion. With the participation of members of all parts of the Institution, and after the most careful weighing of alternatives, we have fixed upon a number of projects designed to serve the widest range of audiences in a great variety of ways consistent with our traditions, our skills, and our resources.

The total Smithsonian program, copies of which were distributed at the meeting, is national -- indeed, international -- in scope. It includes appropriate construction projects, the creation of major new exhibitions, as well as important research and publication projects. In the limited time available at this meeting five major projects in the area of the Nation's Capital were singled out for discussion.