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The officers of the Foundation may then seek to negotiate with the Smithsonian the terms of a new agreement for our renewed operation of Hillwood with this additional endowment. Short of that, if adequate new capital could not be generated, it is also possible the Foundation may seek an arrangement with the Smithsonian which would find the more important portions of the Hillwood collections and an endowment given to the Institution independent of the real estate.

The critical fact is that the flexibility necessary to reach [[underline]] any [[/underline]] satisfactory resolution of our current impasse, whether or not that resolution ultimately reinvolves the Smithsonian Institution in the future of Hillwood and its collections, requires in the first instance a determination on the part of the Board of Regents that the Institution is now unable to operate Hillwood as a nonprofit museum under the terms required by the 1968 Agreement. The following resolution was adopted:

VOTED, that the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution hereby determines that the Smithsonian Institution is financially unable to operate Hillwood as a nonprofit museum under the terms specified in the December 14, 1968 Agreement between the Institution and Mrs. Marjorie Merriweather Post, and therefore directs, as provided in Article the Ninth of Mrs. Post's Last Will and Testament, that title to Hillwood pass to the Marjorie Merriweather Post Foundation of D.C. effective July 1, 1976.