16 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1963 



been organized and circulated in over 500 different museums through- 

 out America, as well as in museums in many foreign countries. Al- 

 most 4,500 showings have been made possible in this period by this 

 service. 



The greatest event in the decade 1953-63 was the act passed by 

 Congress in 1958 authorizing the transfer to the Smithsonian Institu- 

 tion of the historic and beautiful old Patent Office Building for con- 

 version to art galleries. Plans are well underway for the establish- 

 ment in this building of public galleries, study rooms, and restoration 

 laboratories that will allow the National Collection of Fine Arts to 

 display its great collections of American and other paintings in a 

 manner that could never have been achieved in its present borrowed 

 and incongruous space in the Natural History Building of the Smith- 

 sonian Institution. 



Freer Gallery of Art, 1953-63 



The period 1953-63 is the fourth decade in the history of the Freer 

 Gallery of Art. This unit of the Smithsonian Institution was es- 

 tablished by the late Charles Lang Freer as a gallery for the display 

 of great collections of art and as a center for the study especially of 

 the art of the Far East and the Mddle East. 



The annual attendance of the Gallery during the decade has grown 

 from approximately 70,000 to 183,000 per year. The collections have 

 also developed in notable ways. Additions to the collections, as pro- 

 vided in Mr. Freer's will and purchased with the income from his be- 

 quest, have included over 450 major objects of art. The most signifi- 

 cant of these additions have been in the fields of ]VIing porcelains and in 

 Japanese painting. l^Irs. Eugene Meyer, the one survivor of the three 

 persons permitted by Iklr. Freer's will to make gifts to the collection, 

 generously has given in this period three Chinese bronzes and one 

 Chinese painting. Members of the professional staff of the Freer 

 during the decade have published research on the collections in 16 

 books and over 100 articles. 



The Freer Gallery has continued during this decade its world- 

 famous studies of the scientific composition of metallic, ceramic, and 

 other objects of art, and the development of new preservation tech- 

 niques. The Gallery during these years has been the base for the 

 publication, under the auspices of the International Institute for 

 Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, of the I.l.G. Abstracts 

 (commonly called the Freer Abstracts) . The current number of this 

 journal shows that almost 4,000 abstracts of published works on 

 conservation have so far been made available to the whole museum 

 world through this medium. 



