Transition To National Archives
In January 2004, the United States Congress passed legislation that provided for the establishment of a federally operated Nixon Presidential Library. Specifically, the legislation amended the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act of 1974, which mandated that Nixon's Presidential Materials were to remain in National Archives II facility in College Park, Maryland. Under this new legislation, over 30,000 presidential gifts as well as millions of presidential records were moved from College Park to Yorba Linda.
In March 2005, the Nixon Foundation invited the National Archives to jointly operate the Nixon Library, and then-Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein allowed for the Nixon Library to become the twelfth federally funded presidential library, operated and staffed by NARA in conjunction with the Nixon Foundation. In April 2006, Weinstein appointed Timothy Naftali director of the Library. On July 11, 2007 the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum was officially welcomed into the federal presidential library system.
Before the National Archives took over its management, the Nixon Library had been accused by several media outlets of glossing over Nixon's 1974 resignation with "whitewashed" exhibits. In 2007, the National Archives removed the Watergate exhibit that had been in place for 17 years and, after three years of empty exhibit space, announced that the new exhibit was scheduled to open in July 2010. The Nixon Foundation objected to the proposed exhibit, specifically the process by which the proposed exhibit was crafted due to the fact that the Nixon Foundation was not consulted in the way that other presidential foundations are in similar situations. The Foundation filed a 158 page memorandum to the Assistant Archivist for Presidential Libraries expressing their dissatisfaction and NARA stated a committee would review the objection but gave no timeline for when that process would be concluded. The exhibit opened on March 31, 2011 to rave reviews.
In November 2011, the director of the Library, Tim Naftali, resigned his position. A new director will be appointed in the coming months.
Read more about this topic: Richard Nixon Presidential Library And Museum
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