Save America's Treasures:
A Clarion Call to Save Our Heritage
For the New MillenniumSave America's Treasures Director T.C. Benson
Describes the Program at Heritage Preservation's
1998 Annual MeetingSave America's Treasures, a program to protect America's threatened cultural treasures, is now accepting applications for Official Project status. Official Projects will receive a Save America's Treasures kit and logo package, which may be used to assist in fund-raising and visibility activities.
Save America's Treasures is a program of the White House Millennium Council in partnership with Heritage Preservation, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and the National Park Foundation. Call Heritage Preservation at
1-877-TREASURE to request an application.A whisper of an idea less than a year ago, Save America's Treasures has become a clarion call to the nation to save what we cherish of our past before it's too late. Save America's Treasures Director T.C. Benson described the program at Heritage Preservation's annual meeting in October 1998 at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Ms. Benson's enthusiasm for Save America's Treasures was clearly contagious. The audience of conservation, preservation, museum, and library professionals were supportive of the program's mission: to build public awareness about the need to preserve American treasures and to raise money to preserve them.
"Save America's Treasures is about real stuff," Ms. Benson said. "People don't want to go to an institution and see digitized reproductions; they want to see the real thing." But if they don't realize that their heritage is deteriorating, they won't be inclined to do anything about it. This is why education and public awareness are fundamental components of Save America's Treasures, she said.
"We're going to touch individuals and motivate them to action," Ms. Benson said. "We're asking people, 'What are you going to say to your grandchildren when they ask how you celebrated the millennium?' And we want them to be able to say, 'I saved a treasure.'"
Handily brandishing her own personal treasure, a framed family portrait that has been a part of her family heritage for generations, Ms. Benson said, "This is Save America's Treasures."
The program is reaching out to communities and individuals, encouraging them to treat their artifacts with care, whether they be national icons, important works of art, or a meaningful family bible.
Despite its small staff, Save America's Treasures has already achieved great success. In the appropriations bill signed into law by President Clinton in October, the program was granted $30 million through the Department of the Interior. And with the support and leadership of Honorary Chairman Hillary Rodham Clinton, the program is reaching millions of Americans.
A thick book of newspaper clippings from Mrs. Clinton's summer tour from Washington, D.C., to Seneca Falls, New York, during which she showed Americans firsthand their deteriorating heritage, is testament to her success. Her tour drew media and public attention to American icons such as the Star-Spangled Banner, Thomas Edison’s Laboratory and, very special to Heritage Preservation, a Save Outdoor Sculpture! project to restore the Francis Scott Key Monument in Baltimore, where she announced the $1.4 million Target/National Endowment for the Arts SOS! Conservation Treatment Awards.
More recently, Mrs. Clinton visited the Louis Armstrong Archives and Museum in Flushing, New York, the Longfellow National Historic Site in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the African Meeting House in Boston. Later she flew to California where she visited the Breed Street Shul and the Broadway Theater and Commercial District in Los Angeles, and the Conservatory of Flowers in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. All of these sites are in urgent need of conservation.
Through its aggressive campaign to make corporate citizens aware of the disrepair of countless artifacts, Save America's Treasures has already earned the support of benfactors including Target Stores, Polo Ralph Lauren Corporation, General Electric, Norman Lear, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and several private citizens. Still, there is an enormous amount yet to be done.
Mrs. Clinton best summarized the critical role of Save America's Treasures when she said, "By giving our own gifts to the future, we can make sure that when the new millennium finally comes, we won't just be celebrating a new year. We will be celebrating the enduring strength of our democracy, the renewal of our sense of citizenship, and the full flowering of the American mind and spirit."