Ronald Reagan Presidential Museum and Library
Mark Hunt, Director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Museum and Library
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Hello, my name is Mark Hunt. I'm director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum. We're located on a hilltop site about 45 minutes northwest of Los Angeles in Simi Valley, California. The library and museum were dedicated in November 1991, and opened to the public for the first time at that ceremony. The land, the building, all the equipment and exhibits that were placed in it were all accomplished with private funds that were raised by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, which continues today to exist to raise funds and sponsor programs that deal with the legacy and interpret the life and times of Ronald Reagan.
Since 1991, the Reagan library and museum has hosted over a million visitors. In our Presidential galleries, the permanent gallery installations, we explore the life and the times of Ronald Wilson Reagan, from his birth in Tampico, Illinois in 1911 through his many careers, as radio sportscaster, Hollywood actor, spokesman for General Electric, and finally his beginning in a career of politics when he entered the race for the governorship of California in 1966. He won that by a landslide vote, went on to a second term, ultimately began to be a major player in the Republican party on the national scene, and to secure the Republican nomination for President of the United States in 1980.
The election campaign during 1980 and the circumstances confronting voters at that time in the nation are documented throughout the gallery, as are all of the decisions and activities that went on during that eight years of Reagan administration.
Throughout the galleries, we've tried to use interactive exhibitions and a great deal of videotape to really have Ronald Reagan tell a good deal of his own story, and we think that's a very effective way to interpret history to the public.
The library also houses all of the documents from the Reagan administration. Over 50 million pages of documents, 1.6 million still photographs, 750,000 feet of film and videotape, all of which document all activities of the Reagan administration from 1981 to 1989. And of course we have some video and audio tape and photographs from periods in his earlier life. These documents are here, available for the public and for scholars and researchers to use on a reservation basis. All they need to do is contact our archivists.
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