I. Michael Heyman, Smithsonian Leader, Dies at 81

I. Michael Heyman, who led the Smithsonian Institution in the 1990s during a period of significant expansion and fierce controversy over the exhibiting of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, died on Nov. 19 at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 81.

The cause was emphysema, his son James said.

Having served for a decade as the chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, Mr. Heyman in 1994 began a largely successful five-year run overseeing the Smithsonian, the world’s biggest museum complex.

During his time in Washington, Mr. Heyman obtained financing to build the National Museum of the American Indian and a $60 million donation for a National Air and Space Museum annex in Northern Virginia. He directed the creation of the institution’s first Web site and a network of affiliates that now includes 170 museums across the country. By the time he announced his retirement in 1999, donations had increased to $146 million from $52 million in 1995....