PREFACE TO REPRINT OF 1916 
The original edition of this bulletin, published in 1909, having 
been exhausted, this reprint is issued to meet the continued de- 
mand for information regarding the National Gallery of Art. Ad- 
vantage has been taken of the opportunity to incorporate the ad- 
ditions to the Gallery during the intervening period and to make 
a few corrections, but otherwise the volume remains unchanged. 
Although the growth of the collection has depended entirely on 
gifts and bequests, the number of acquisitions has considerably 
more than doubled within this time, and in the lines of contempo- 
rary American painting and oriental art the Gallery has attained 
a prominence which has brought world-wide recognition. For this 
advancement it is almost wholly indebted to the generosity of Mr. 
Charles L. Freer, of Detroit, Mich., and Mr. William T. Evans, of 
New York City. Of European art the Gallery possesses compara- 
tively few examples, though recently enriched by a collection of 
drawings in various mediums by 82 of the most eminent of con- 
temporary French painters, sculptors and engravers, and greatly 
aided in this direction by extensive loans. The Gallery has also 
gained distinction through several noteworthy special exhibitions. 
In 1909 the paintings then assembled were installed in the older 
Museum building, but the following year they were transferred 
to the recently completed natural history building, where the cen- 
tral skylighted part of the great north hall has been provisionally 
assigned to the purposes of the Gallery. This space, 146 feet long 
and 48 feet wide, is enclosed with a screen wall, 13 feet n inches 
high, adapted to the hanging of pictures, and is subdivided by par- 
titions of the same height and construction into 8 compartments. 
The largest of these, midway of the general enclosure, measures 48 
by 36 feet. Adjoining on either side are two rooms of uniform 
dimensions, 36 by 18 feet, followed at the south by a single room, 
48 by 18 feet, and at the north by two rooms, each vjyi by 14X feet. 
Including the walls of the corridor separating the smaller rooms 
on one side from those on the other, 950 lineal feet of surface suita- 
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