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The Council of the National Academy has asked me to present to you, for a decision, its plan to hold a Henry Ward Ranger Centennial Memorial Exhibition and charge certain expenses to the Fund he established. Copy of excerpt from Ranger's will is included in the enclosed pamphlet in which Mr. Ranger's lawyer, Mr. Phelps, so aptly expresses the broader purposes of the Fund.

Thomas M. Beggs, Director of the National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. wrote on March 6th to Eliot Clark, our President, that he thought it most appropriate that the 100th birthday of Henry Ward Ranger (1958) be commemorated with an exhibition in the Academy's galleries in New York with a comprehensive group of paintings purchased by the Academy with Ranger Funds since 1919.

The purpose of the exhibition is to present an outstanding selection to the public from the 220 paintings purchased to date with Ranger Funds. There has been no such group exhibition since 1929 in Washington and the paintings have never before been exhibited as a group in New York City. It is our hope that by this exhibition we can further stress the importance of Mr. Ranger's gift and its significance to American Art and that an awareness of his beneficence may help artists to come together with museums and connoisseurs in developing sounder patronage of American Art. Through the press and the distribution of the catalog to the museums, libraries, universities throughout the United States interest will be stimulated in the Fund.

The twenty-four paintings permanently accepted to date for the National Collection of Fine Arts would be sent to New York at no expense to the Academy for the exhibition and will be