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[[preprinted]]
[[image - line drawing of the Smithsonian Institution complex]]
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
Washington, D.C. 20560
U.S.A.
[[/preprinted]]

October 23, 1978

Mr. Augustus P. Loring
Treasurer
Boston Athenaeum
10 1/2 Beacon Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02108

Dear Mr. Loring:

The Regents of the Smithsonian Institution and the Commission of the National Portrait Gallery have recently considered at some length the possible acquisition of the Athenaeum's Gilbert Stuart portraits of George and Martha Washington. This was the first opportunity for each body to discuss this important question with full knowledge of the points of view of the Athenaeum and the Museum of Fine Arts, as well as the first introduction to the whole question for several of our new Regents.

I should tell you first of all that both bodies strongly share our view that these portraits belong in the National Portrait Gallery of the United States. As historical documents of incomparable significance they are in a real sense part of the national patrimony and deserve, indeed demand, the same care that has been accorded the manuscripts of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

It is largely for this reason that both the Board of Regents and the National Portrait Gallery Commission found the idea of a conditional purchase unacceptable. While sympathetic to the views of the Museum of Fine Arts, we do not feel that the Smithsonian should be party to an arrangement what would have these portraits shuttling back and forth between Washington and Boston for all eternity.  To accept such a condition would, we believe, constitute a peril to the portraits themselves and disservice to the people of the nation to which they would belong.