The Nation - News from May 9, 1989

Officials of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and the Museum of the American Indian in New York signed an agreement to transfer the world’s largest collection of American Indian artifacts to the Smithsonian. The museum agreement capped years of often-acrimonious negotiations among federal, state and local politicians, officials of the Smithsonian and the Indian museum, and American Indians. Besides the building of the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, the agreement also calls for moving the existing Indian museum to larger quarters in the old U.S. Custom House in Manhattan, where part of the Heye Foundation collection will be exhibited.