Mood Swing was given its premiere by the Pennsylvania Ballet 

 in the Opera House; it was the sixth new work created by the 

 Kennedy Center Ballet Commissioning Project. 



The Kennedy Center Festival Australia celebrated the arts and 

 artists of Australia with a week of performances, readings by Aus- 

 tralian aurhors, film programs, street theater, an exhibitions, and 

 displays of native landscapes and animals. The Australian Em- 

 bassy, National Zoological Park, American Film Institute, and 

 Library of Congress also participated in the festival. 



National Gallery of Art 



Earl A. Powell III, Director 



The National Gallery preserves, collects, exhibits, and fosters 

 the understanding of works of an at the highest possible mu- 

 seum and scholarly standards. 



The year opened with the first major exhibition sent by the 

 Portuguese government to the United States, "The Age of the 

 Baroque in Portugal." The exhibition included many extra- 

 ordinary treasures from the 18th century, a period of brilliant 

 achievemenr and patronage in Portugal. An exhibition of Re- 

 naissance portrait medals drew from the gallery's collection 

 and from other museums throughout the world. A retrospec- 

 tive exhibition of 80 paintings, watercolors, and drawings by 

 the early 20th-century Austrian expressionist artist Egon 

 Schiele was supported by the Austrian government and the 

 ciry of Vienna. A survey of the work of Willem de Kooning 

 from the late 1930s to the mid-1980s celebrated the 90th birth- 

 day of one of America's foremost artists. Two other exhibitions 

 showed the prints of Roy Lichtenstein from the 1950s to the 

 present and the photographs of Robert Frank, whose work in- 

 fluenced the course of post-World War II photography. The 

 exhibition "The Waking Dream: Photography's First Cen- 

 tury — Selections from the Gilman Paper Company Collec- 

 tion" consisted of 260 works, some rare or unique, that 

 illustrated the beginnings of photography. Exhibitions of con- 

 temporary works included an overview of recent prints and 

 sculpture from the gallery's Gemini G.E.L. Archive and "Mil- 

 ton Avery: Works on Paper," featuring works given by the 

 artist's family. 



Purchases for the collections are made possible by funds do- 

 nated by private citizens. Among the important acquisitions 

 this year were a large landscape by the American master 

 Thomas Cole, Coast Scene with Ruined Tower, and a recently dis- 

 covered portrait of The Marquis de Bertnghen by Jean-Baptiste 

 Oudry, the most important French 18th-century painter of 

 still life and hunting scenes. Another painting by Oudry, 

 Mtsse and Lutine. was given by Mr. and Mrs. Eugene V Thaw 



A large gift of 31 French, English, and American works 

 from Paul Mellon included an early Winslow Homer and 

 three Toulouse-Lautrec paintings. Ruth Benedict bequeathed 



68 prints and drawings by American and European artists 

 from the 16th to the 20th century. Tyler Graphics donated a 

 number of prints by Frank Stella and Roy Lichtenstein, and 

 Dorothy and Herbert Vogel gave a colored-ink— wash wall 

 drawing by Sol Lewitt. 



Publications during the year included the first systematic 

 catalogue for the sculpture and decorative arts collection. 



The Education Division offered programs on the French col- 

 lection that included lectures, films, an audio tour, a panel dis- 

 cussion honoring the bicentennial of the Louvre, and a new 

 guide to the gallery's French paintings. The division also dis- 

 tributed the Directory of Teacher Programs in Art Museums in 

 computer disk form to 1,500 teachers. 



The Office of Design and Installation received the presti- 

 gious Presidential Award for Design Excellence for consis- 

 tently maintaining "standards of excellence in exhibition 

 design that are appreciated and admired by museum goers 

 and other insntutions the world over." 



Reading Is Fundamental, Inc. 



Ruth Graves, President 



Reading Is Fundamental's network of local reading motiva- 

 tion projects and its public and private secror support have 

 made it the nation's leading children's literacy organization. 



As RIF approached the end of its third decade, more than 

 166,000 volunteers were working at 16,000 sites across the 

 country to enrich children's lives with books and reading ac- 

 tivities. Through RIF, children are reading in a housing proj- 

 ect in Chicago, a Boys and Girls Club in Detroit, a Native 

 American reservation in South Dakota, a juvenile detention 

 center in St. Louis, a hospital in Harlem, a migrant program 

 in Texas, a school for children with disabilities in Florida, and 

 similar settings in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, 

 Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Guam. 



The most significant thing about 1994 was the expansion of 

 RIF s program to include more at-risk children. In Oakland, 

 Calif., for example, the public school system was able to 

 nearly triple the size of its RIF program, with assistance from 

 RIF. There was also a growing recognition on the part of local 

 communities of children's literacy needs. Many of these com- 

 munities have turned to RIF as the best way to address those 

 needs. This is perhaps best illustrated in Atlanta, where RIF's 

 program in the inner city grew dramatically, thanks to the in- 

 volvement and support of the Atlanta Partnership, a coalition 

 of business, civic, and religious groups. 



The year also witnessed the national rollout of three of 

 RIFs pilot programs (RUNNING START®, Family of Read- 

 ers , Shared Beginnings ), the rapid expansion of its program 

 for homeless and other seriously at-risk children (Project 

 Open Book ), and the successful completion of the first phase 



IOO 



