NEH spends $559,000 on Iraq preservation

[United Press International]

WASHINGTON, May 7 (UPI) -- The National Endowment for the
Humanities has made grants totaling $559,000 in a "Recovering Iraq's
Past" program to help Iraq preserve its cultural resources.
NEH Deputy Chairman Lynne Munson said the program was set up
in response to American scholars and curators seeking to travel to
Iraq to work on preservation projects. She said a first round of
awards has gone to Cornell University, $97,000, Massachusetts
College of Art in Boston, $65,510, Simmons College in Boston,
$100,000, University of California at Berkeley, $99,357, and
University of California at Los Angeles, $96,588.
The World Monuments Fund in New York received $100,00o for a
definitive inventory of Iraqi archaeological and historic sites to
include a database, a geographic information system, and a
geographic positioning system for documenting site information and
locations, Munson said.