SECRETARY'S REPORT 7 



Commonwealth of Australia, the National Geographic Society, and 

 the Smithsonian Institution; in zoology, about 10,000 skins and over 

 400 skeletons of North American birds from one donor, 4,500 fishes 

 from the Gulf of Mexico, a collection of 15,000 British Microlepidop- 

 tera, a bequest of 10,500 beetles, and sizable lots of marine inverte- 

 brates from Arctic America; in botany, large collections of plants 

 from Peru, New Zealand, Colombia, and Africa; in geology, 24 kinds 

 of minerals hitherto unrepresented in the national collections, several 

 new meteorites, many thousand invertebrate fossils (including the 

 large and important Cushman and Vaughan collections of Forami- 

 nifera and the Renfro fossil-invertebrate collection of 250,000 speci- 

 mens), and skeletal remains of the giant ground sloth Megatherium 

 from western Panama; in engineering and industries, exhibition mate- 

 rial illustrating the operation of a textile-finishing mill and 51 ex- 

 amples of the work of the pioneering photographer Victor Prevost; 

 and in history, a silver-filigree basket reputed to have belonged to 

 Napoleon, two outstanding models of historic ships, and several 

 interesting philatelic and numismatic acquisitions. 



Field work by members of the Museum staff or by collaborators was 

 conducted in Colombia, Guatemala, Panama, Alaska and the Arctic, 

 Africa, the West Indies, and many sections of the United States. 

 The Museum issued 29 publications. 



National Gallery oj Art. — Visitors to the Gallery during the year 

 reached a total of 2,187,293, a daily average attendance of 6,025 

 persons. This represented a daily increase of 1,800 over the previous 

 year's record. Accessions as gifts, loans, or deposits numbered 2,354. 

 Ten special exhibitions were held at the Gallery, including a 2-month 

 showing of the celebrated "Art Treasures from the Vienna Collections," 

 lent by the Austrian Government, and "Makers of History in Wash- 

 ington, 1800-1950," an exhibit that opened on June 29, 1950, cele- 

 brating the sesquicentennial of the establishment of the Federal 

 Government in Washington. Special exhibitions of prints from the 

 Rosenwald collection were circulated to seven galleries and museums 

 in this country and Canada, and exhibitions from the "Index of 

 American Design" were shown at 34 institutions in 17 States, the 

 District of Columbia, and London, England. Over 20,000 photo- 

 graphs were acquired from European museums and are being cataloged 

 and filed. The staff continued to answer hundreds of inquiries and 

 to give opinion on works of art brought to the Gallery and advice on 

 research problems in art. The volume "Masterpieces of Sculpture 

 from the National Gallery of Art," by Charles Seymour, Jr., was 

 placed on sale during the year, and a second volume of "Masterpieces 

 of Painting," by Huntington Cairns and John Walker, was in process. 

 More than 28,000 persons attended the special tours of the Gallery, 



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