University officials are hoping to strike a deal with Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot that would allow him to rent tens of thousands of artifacts from the Peabody Museum of Archaeology's enormous and underexposed collection.

University officials said that such an arrangement, although still far from completion, would allow the museum to both broaden the exposure of its public collection and raise needed funds.

Peabody officials said this week that they have informally begun talks with Perot's associates about constructing a Texas extension to the Peabody and renting it some artifacts on a rotating basis. The extension would be built by, and would bear the name of the Dallas computer magnate.

Although the plan would call for renting anywhere between 30-50,000 artifacts at a time to Perot, this would at most represent about 3 percent of the museum's 3,000,000 African, South American, Asian and native American pieces.

Perot, who became a multibillionaire when General Motors purchased his computer company for $2.5 billion one year ago, is currently engaged in a controversial attempt to buy the Museum of the American Indian in New York for $72 million in pocket money. If the deal is completed, he is expected to build a 10-acre home for the collection in Dallas.

One Peabody official, who asked not to be named, said that after learning that New York government officials were using their resources to squeich the Perot-Indian Museum deal, the Peabody decided to approach Perot with its own loan program "lest that 70 million go to waste."

"Perot has indicated a willingness to come up with absolutely incredible sums of money to establish a museum in Dallas. We [at the Peabody] thought we might be able to work with him to set up some adjunct facility and bring our collection into the public eye," said Bruce Heafitz'62, a member of the Peabody's visiting committee, an advisory body to the museum.

More Exposure

The Peabody, considered one of the three top archeological museums in the world, has three million internationally gathered artifacts--only 10 percent of which ever are viewed by the public--said museum Director C.C. Lamberg-Karlovsky.

The Peabody's relatively small $5-6 million endowment is devoted primarily to teaching and research,

and the museum is heavily dependent on federally funded, nationwide loan programs to increase the collection's exposure, said Karlovsky.

He said the museum has been unable to exhibit most of its collection because of financial and space restrictions incurred through its "obvious devotion to teaching and research" at Harvard.

He added that a deal with Perot would:

*provide visible accessibility to the Peabody collections through a multi-year, rotating loan program:

*force, the museum to cycle through, cleans and organizes its own exhibits: