THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART 
15 
Gallery’’ was proposed both to the Regents and to Congress. 
Though chiefly of ethnological value, it had been exhibited at 
art galleries in London and at the Louvre in Paris, and its 
acquisition for the Institution was petitioned by prominent 
American artists. A suggestion made in 1847 by the assistant 
secretary in charge of the library that plaster copies of some 
of the more celebrated works of the plastic arts be procured 
from abroad, met with favorable consideration and preliminary 
arrangements were entered into for carrying it into effect. A 
plan for receiving designs for buildings, of which such as were 
meritorious would be placed in the gallery of art, was also 
agreed to in 1850. In 1852 the J. M. Stanley collection of 
Indian pictures was deposited by the artist in the Institution, 
where it continued to attract much attention until its unfortu- 
nate destruction by fire in 1865. 
The completion of the Smithsonian building in 1857, followed 
by the fitting up of certain exhibition halls under a special act 
of Congress, made it possible for the Institution to accept the 
Government collections at the Patent Office in the succeeding 
year. A proposition to take over the property of the National 
Institute at the same time was declined by that society, and 
during the four years which intervened before it came into the 
possession of the Smithsonian under the provisions of the law, 
it suffered greatly from lack of care. 
Following the transfers, the distribution of the art collection 
was about as follows: The prints were kept with the library in 
the west hall, one of the rooms which had been constructed for 
the gallery. The miscellaneous paintings were hung in the 
adjoining range, also designed for art but then occupied as a 
reading room. The Indian portraits and scenes, some three 
hundred in number, mainly by Stanley and King, were pro- 
vided for in the western end of the large upper hall, while the 
examples of the plastic arts were exhibited wherever they could 
be best accommodated. Some objects were also cared for in 
the Regents’ room and other offices. The time had not yet 
come to segregate the art collection, as it stiff contained too few 
examples of esthetic merit to dignify it with the title of a gallery, 
and there were no resources with which to take advantage of 
this small but not unworthy nucleus. 
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