Despite the consensus that the flowers should be moved, directors have yet to agree on a space for them.

"For four years now it's been on the table as the most pressing issue," Rossi-Wilcox said.

Such a move would require swapping space between the Botanical Museum, which owns the flowers, and one of the other branches of the Museum of Cultural and Natural History.

The other branches--Comparative Zoology, Peabody and Mineralogical & Geological--each have their own directors.

The administrative division between the four museums has delayed action to save the Flowers, museum administrators said.

Decisions about museum space are made collectively by the four directors, each of whom chairs an academic department or holds other major responsibilities in the Faculty. None of the directors are professional museum administrators.

Each director is reluctant to relinquish space, which they consider a capital commodity of their academic departments, according to Carl A. Francis, associate curator of the Mineralogical Museum.

"They're four academic directors with a lot of other things on their plates so the wheels turn very slowly," Whitehouse said. "From the public view we're one museum but administratively we're four."

The museums, which for 120 years have operated as separate entities, are now undergoing a partial merger. They plan to unite their public aspects under one executive director early next year, according to Dorothy M. Lewis, who is overseeing the director search. Lewis is assistant dean for finance in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

"Once the director is there we'll have a good format to think about relocating the Flowers," said Jay L. Taft, director of administration for the Museum of Comparative Zoology.

Decisions about the Flowers have essentially been put on hold until the director is hired.

"Our first objective is to put the museums together, then focus on museum initiatives," Knoll said. "No one's been resisting a move. It would be unfair to the future director fours to enact a decision that might require major fundraising."

The cost of moving and restoring the glass and installing a more advanced climate control system is estimated at $3 million, Rossi-Wilcox said.

"The Glass Flowers need such a specific environment that it would be very expensive," she said. "This is not just a small problem that gets fixed with band-aids and glue.