The Peabody Museum will use a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to fund an innovative collection-sharing project with nine museums across the country.

NEH announced last week that it will support the project, one of the largest federal museum loan projects, with funds totaling more than $250,000.

The Peabody Museum, a research-oriented institution with modest exhibition facilities, will receive $150,000 to restore, organize, photograph and ship artifacts from its collection. The art, history and general museums that will exhibit the Peabody artifacts will use the remaining funds to organize the exhibits and prepare interpretative brochures, lectures, maps and labels.

Trading Post

Fran Silverman, registrar of the museum, who developed the program and will oversee it, yesterday called the plan "a very unique pilot program," adding that museums like the Peabody have never attempted such a project before.

The Boston Museum of Science, the Children's Museum of Boston, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester are among the institutions that will borrow from the Peabody collections.

Out of the Closet

The program will allow the general public to see important artifacts from the Peabody collection that are normally in storage or displayed without much explanation, Charles H. Howard, who is planning a collaborative exhibit at the Boston Museum of Science, said yesterday.

Howard, who will use Peabody artifacts in an exhibit on Mayan culture, added that if the program succeeds, NEH may fund similar programs with other institutions.

The Museum of Science exhibit, the first of the federally funded projects, will open May 15, 1981.