46 ANNUAL KEPORT SMITHSOKIAN INSTITUTION, 1923 



Museum, said building to be erected when funds from gifts or 

 bequests are in the possession of the said Regents, in sections or com- 

 pletely on the north side of the Mall between the Natural History 

 Building, United States National Museum, and Seventh Street, leav- 

 ing a space between it and the latter of not less than one hundred 

 feet and a space of not less than one hundred feet between it and 

 Seventh Street, with its south front on a line with the south front 

 of the said Natural History Building. 



A two-page leaflet on the national gallery has been issued, which, 

 like the recent leaflets on the Smithsonian Institution, is to have 

 a wide distribution. It is intended to bring forcibly to the atten- 

 tion of the public the great need for a separate building to house 

 the national art collections. 



Detailed information regarding the growth of the gallery within 

 the institution and as a feature of the United States National 

 Museum may be found in Bulletin 70 of the National Museum, and 

 its subsequent activities are recorded in the annual reports of the 

 institution and Musuem and in the annual reports of the gallery for 

 the years 1921 and 1922. 



In two articles prepared by the director and published in art 

 journals during the year attention is called to the growth of the 

 national gallery and to the great need for a gallery building. The 

 first, under the title "The Story of the National Gallery of Art," 

 appeared in Art and Archeology for June, 1923. The story of the 

 National Gallery of Art from its beginning nearly a century ago 

 is the record of the prolonged struggle of the art idea for national 

 recognition for a place in the serious consideration of the American 

 people, and it is to be regetted that to-day, although art institu- 

 tions are springing up on all hands, art has slight national recogni- 

 tion beyond the attention necessary to the care and display of the 

 art treasures acquired by gift and bequest. For nearly a century 

 the Smithsonian Institution has harbored the dream of a gallery of 

 art, but art has been in the shadow of diversified scientific activities 

 and in the deeper shadow of the all-absorbing material interests of 

 a rapidly developing Nation. To-day the conditions are far from 

 satisfactory. Growth of the collections through gratuitous contri- 

 butions, even, is embarrassed by the almost complete exhaustion of 

 space for the reception and display of all save accessions of very 

 limited extent, and the problem before the institution, and certainly 

 with equal insistence before the American people, is " Shall America 

 have a National Gallery of Art, or a National Museum of Art, that 

 will give us a respectable place among the cultured nations of the 

 world?" The story of the vicissitudes of the incipient, struggling 

 national gallery is here presented with the view of making known a 



