Reports of the Museums and Research Institutes 



53 



Florida, and California as part of the Smithsonian Affilia- 

 tions Program. Future projects in Maryland, Nevada, and 

 Missouri are also in the works. Thirty portraits of Virginians 

 from our collection will be on view at the Virginia Historical 

 Society for the next three years and a number of major works 

 from the Gallery are being loaned to museums around the 

 country. 



During FY 2000, NPG acquired approximarely 200 ob- 

 jects. Among the most important were 19 Indian Peace 

 Medals from Betty A. and Lloyd G. Shermer; three folio vol- 

 umes with hand-colored lithographs of McKenney and Halls 

 History of the Indian Tribes: and a charcoal of Agnes Meyer by 

 Marius de Zayas. Purchases included a bust of Cab Calloway 

 by Domenico Facci; a pastel of Van Wyck Brooks by John 

 Steuart Curry; screen prints of Edward Kennedy and Ronald 

 Reagan by Andy Warhol; drawings of Jerome Robbins and 

 Zero Mostel by Al Hirschfeld; photographs of Miguel Covar- 

 rubias by Edward Weston; Blind Tom by George K. Warren; 

 Father Divine by James Van Der Zee; Jesse Owens by Leni 

 Riefenstahl; and Sarah Vaughan by Josef Breitenbach. Paint- 

 ings include Lynn Fontanne by Wilfred de Glehn; Arthur 

 Miller by Herbert Abrams; Janius Brutus Booth attributed 

 to John Neagle; and Samuel Griffin by Cosmo Alexander. 



Marc Pachter became the fourth Director of the National 

 Portrait Gallery in July when Alan Fern retired. A cultural 

 historian, biographer, and author, Pachter is known as the 

 Smithsonian's "Master Interviewer" for his creation at the 

 Portrait Gallery of the Living Self-Portrait interview series 

 with distinguished Americans. His interviews, before live 

 audiences, have included Clare Boothe Luce, Walter 

 Cronkite, Agnes de Mille, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Katharine 

 Graham, and Senator J. William Fulbright, among others. 

 Interviews are taped and many have been used in radio and 

 televison programs. Pachter's career at the Smithsonian in- 

 cludes the post of Counselor to the Secretary, Deputy 

 Assistant Secretary for External Affairs, and Assistant Direc- 

 tor and Chief Hisrorian at the Portrait Gallery. Supervising 

 electronic media development, facilitating international 

 partnerships, chairing the Smithsonian's 150th anniversary 

 celebration, and overseeing the Smithsonian Institution 

 Press, The Smithsonian Associates Program, and the Smith- 

 sonian magazine are some of the responsibilities he has held. 

 His work in television includes commentary on CBS's 

 "Nightwatch," C-Span, PBS, and the "Voice of America." 

 He authored and edited several books, including Abroad in 

 America: Visitors to the New Nation, Champions of American 

 Sport, and Telling Lives: The Biographer's Art. He is a graduate 

 of the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard Uni- 

 versity. Marc Pachter's prime goal as NPG Director is to 

 communicate the lives, meaning, and inspiration of remark- 

 able Americans, past and present. The Portrait Gallery, in 

 this way, will connect all Americans, across generations, re- 

 gions, and communities, with their shared heritage of 

 national achievement. 



The Peale Papers and Yale University Press published vol- 

 ume 5 of The Selected Papers of Charles Willson Peale and His 

 Family, the Autobiography of Charles Willson Peale. Work has 

 begun on volume 6, selected documents and letters from the 



children of James and Charles Willson Peale. In addition, 

 the Peale Papers and Yale University Press will publish an 

 abridged paperback edition of Charles Willson Peak's Autobi- 

 ography, suitable for classroom use for courses on American 

 studies, American art history, American literature, and 

 American history, not excluding a more popular audience. 



The Center for Elecrronic Research and Outreach Services 

 (CEROS) has added 1 1 new Web areas to NPG's award- 

 winning Web site. The total number of visitor sessions has 

 doubled in the past year, averaging 1 .4 million on-line visi- 

 tors per year. A new Web-based Collections and Research 

 Public Access database, featuring digital images of NPG's 

 collections, will be implemented in FY 2001. New portrait 

 material from the Catalog of American Portraits and selected 

 images will be added to the Web database as well. A com- 

 plete inventory of the National Portrait Gallery collection 

 has been made, and another 4,500 images were digitized so 

 that more than 9,000 images are now available on the 

 Gallery's Collections Information System (CIS). 



The Conservation Lab has examined or treated approxi- 

 mately 620 objects for the permanent collection, pending 

 acquisitions, loans, affiliations, or in preparation for the 

 Gallery's extensive traveling shows across the United States, 

 Asia, and Europe. The year 2001 will be devoted to moving 

 the collection out of the Patent Office Building to a new 

 storage facility. 



The Education Department inaugurated an expanded 

 menu of public programs for our Washington, D.C., 

 metropolitan area audiences. A rich array of exhibition or 

 permanent collection-related living history performances, 

 teacher workshops, symposia, panel discussions, lunchtime 

 lecture and book signings, and theatrical and musical per- 

 formances artracted an overall audience of 4,880. Highlights 

 included a family day — including interactive portraiture 

 activities, storytelling, special tours, and variety of living 

 history, musical, and reader's theater performances — that 

 included 1 ,200 participants; Hispanic Heritage Month pro- 

 grams rhat included two panel discussions with one that 

 incorporated a concert program on the subject of Afro-Latino 

 presence in American popular culture and music for a 

 combined audience of 480; symposia based on Gallery exhi- 

 bitions featuring works by photographer Henri Carrier- 

 Bresson and African American daguerreotypist Augustus 

 Washington that was attended by 230 and no guests re- 

 spectively; and two Cultures in Motion performances based 

 on the life of entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr., with 475 in 

 attendance. 



An educational grant was received to produce a video, 

 Telling Lives: the Art of the Painted Portrait, for use with the 

 traveling exhibition "A Brush with History: Paintings from 

 the National Portrait Gallery." The first six installments of 

 "Portraits of Character" — featuring a portrait from the Por- 

 trait Gallery's permanent collection and a related story about 

 the sitter — have been published by the Washington Times in 

 their "Newspaper in Education" pages, and NPG is negoti- 

 ating a licensing and distribution contract for syndication 

 across the country. Extensive print and Web site versions of 

 resource materials — including teacher resource packets, ac- 



