Statue of Liberty Congress officially renamed Bedloe's Island as Liberty Island, a change advocated by Bartholdi generations earlier. The act also mentioned the efforts to found an American Museum of Immigration on the island, which backers took as federal approval of the project, though the government was slow to grant funds for it. Nearby Ellis Island was made part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument by proclamation of President Lyndon Johnson in 1965. In 1972, the immigration museum, in the statue's base, was finally opened in a ceremony led by President Richard Nixon. The museum's backers never provided it with an endowment
Conservation-restoration of the Statue of Liberty agreed to a working relationship with the Committee. In June 1981, the Committee was incorporated as a non-profit foundation licensed by the state of New York to raise funds for the restoration effort. The Committee hired four French consultants said to have considerable expertise in their respective fields: an architect-engineer, a metals expert, a structural engineer and a mechanical engineer who were asked to compose a technical report on the physical condition of the statue. The French consultants visited Liberty Island in May, June, October and December 1981, before presenting a preliminary white paper to the National Park Service on