Viewing page 131 of 260

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

-119-

[[underlined]] Adjournment [[/underlined]]

After a brief executive session, the formal business of the Board of Regents was concluded at 12 noon and was followed by an informal luncheon with the Secretary and his executive staff.

[[underlined]] Regents' Dinner [[/underlined]]

The traditional Regents' dinner was held in Charles Blitzer's honor on Sunday evening, January 23, 1983, in the Great Hall of the National Portrait Gallery and the Lincoln Gallery of the National Museum of American Art. After dinner the Secretary greeted the Regents and guests and presented to Mr. Blitzer the Secretary's Gold Medal for Exceptional Service, along with a citation which read as follows:

CHARLES BLITZER

Appointed in 1968 as the Smithsonian's first Assistant Secretary for History and Art, you proceeded with style and intuition to chart a path fraught with uncertainty in a perilous world. While scientists may glory in elegant solutions to recondite problems, you managed to lead us on a triumphant path through the tares and thistles of humanistic enterprise, solving problems of painful minutiae as well as philosophical concepts with elegance. In your self you are humane and your gentility coupled with humility surmounts all obstacles. This Institution and your abounding friends here delight in presenting to Charles Blitzer, as an earnest of our indebtedness, the Secretary's Gold Medal for Exceptional Service.

Mr. Blitzer thanked the Secretary for the award and for his inspiring leadership of the Institution.