Exhibit of the Ranger 

 Collection, 1929, in the 

 National Gallery-National 

 Museum, north hall. Direc- 

 tor William Henry Holmes 

 holds onto a bench to support 

 his single leg. Louise 

 Rosenbusch, research, is also 

 standing. The other two 

 employees of the National 

 Gallery of Art are the clerks 

 Helen Hogen and Glenn 

 Martin, seated at the desk. 



The storage area in the east north range was also 

 overflowing, and anyone in the Museum who had office 

 wall space and wanted a painting could have one. Sev- 

 eral people had original Holmes drawings on loan. Dur- 

 ing the 1930s, the building superintendent had a nude 

 hanging in his office. For about twenty years J.H.F. van 

 Lerius's melodramatic Death Preferred, now the center- 

 piece of the Renwick Gallery, was in the paleobotanical 

 library of the Geological Survey. The diaphanously- 

 clad maiden jumping from a window to escape the 

 clutches of ruffians attracted a number of visitors not 

 interested in plants. 



Three Buildings Acquired 



After half a century, change was in the air. The old 

 Patent Office Building, a few blocks northeast of the 

 Museum, was turned over to the Smithsonian in 1958 

 as a gallery site." Barney Studio House, on Massachu- 

 setts Avenue, became an outlying part of the NCFA in 

 1960. In 1962 the National Portrait Gallery was formed, 

 and in 1968 both art museums were installed in their 

 new home in the Old Patent Office building. Next, the 

 NCFA acquired the building at Seventeenth Street and 

 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, near the White House, now 

 known as the Renwick Gallery. As the final step of this 

 story, the NCFA was retitled the National Museum of 

 American Art in 1980. 



During the mid-1960s, the displays in the north wing 

 of the Natural History Building were gradually dis- 

 mantled and transferred to the newly renovated Patent 



Office Building, between Seventh and Ninth streets on 

 F and G streets, NW. For several years temporary ex- 

 hibits were still hung in the foyer of the National Mu- 

 seum, and there were several special exhibitions in Hall 

 10, the last being in 1969. Thereafter, the whole build- 

 ing reverted to natural history. Yet after all, there was 

 nothing so strange in the long cohabitation of natural 

 history and art. Many major museums, for example the 

 National Museum of Wales, have objects of natural 

 history and objets d'art under the same roof; and no one 

 has ever been able to draw a precise line between art 

 and ethnography. 



In spite of some objections by the anthropologists, 

 the Catlin paintings left the building, for by official 

 decision they are art, even though the Department of 

 Anthropology holds title to them. By contrast, John 

 Elliott's Diana of the Tides remained behind. This is a 

 huge painting, one of the original holdings of the old 

 National Gallery of Art. For years it occupied the east 

 wall of the dinosaur hall because there was no other 

 place to hang it. When the hall was refurbished, the 

 mural was boxed over and hidden from view. When 

 the hall was modified again in the 1970s, rediscovery 

 of the forgotten mural provided a minor sensation. 

 Diana is still hanging in the same place, again hidden 

 from view. Perhaps the National Museum of American 

 Art hopes the National Museum of Natural History will 

 forget where it is or who owns it. Aesthetics aside, the 

 practical fact is that murals twenty-five feet high and 

 very long are awkward to display. □ 



The National Gallery of Art 



45 



