WASHINGTON — I. Michael Heyman, who once led the Smithsonian Institution after serving as chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, has died. He was 81.
Heyman died at his Berkeley home Saturday after a long battle with emphysema. The Smithsonian and the university announced his death Monday.
During five years as chief of the world's largest museum complex, Heyman oversaw creation of the Smithsonian's first website. He secured funding to build the National Museum of the American Indian and a major donation for a National Air and Space Museum annex in Virginia.
Heyman also cancelled the planned exhibition of the B-29 Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, after critics said it was too sympathetic to the Japanese.
Heyman was chancellor of UC-Berkeley from 1980 to 1990.