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67

8 January 1973

Summary of the Minutes of the 
National Portrait Gallery Commission 
[[underlined]] Meeting on November 16, 1972 [[/underlined]]

The Director reported on the following:

1. Mr. Michael Richman, who is completing his doctoral dissertation on Daniel Chester French at the University of Delaware, has been hired on a term appointment to do research for the NPG on portrait sculpture.  Mr. Richman formerly was a Kress Fellow at the National Gallery of Art.

2. A suitable picture has not yet been found to exchange for the original life portrait of Thomas Jefferson by Gilbert Stuart, known as the "Edgehill Portrait", which Mr. and Mrs. Donald Straus of New York have promised to the NPG.

3.  Renovation of the third floor mezzanine of the NPG with funds appropriated by Congress will commence in late winter or early spring.  Half of the area which until now has been used entirely for storage will be prepared as an exhibition space.

4.  A double-decker British bus painted Smithsonian blue will, beginning in April, run back and forth between the NMHT and the FAPG from 10:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., seven days a week, in order to provide convenient free transportation for some of the visitors to the NMHT who may wish to come to the FAPG building.  Such transportation is not now available except by cab and parking in the vicinity of the FAPG is very limited.

5. Commissioner McNeil proposed that it would be helpful if the NPG had advisers to suggest persons in their fields whose portraits ought to be represented in the Gallery's permanent collection.  Mr. McNeil suggested Dr. Julius Comroe of the University of California Medical Center at San Francisco and Dr. Robert D. Dripps of the University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia for the medical sciences.  The Director pointed that the NPG already has such advisers in a number of areas, such as Dr. John Kirkpatrick, Professor Emeritus of Music at Yale, who has been assisting the Gallery in its search for portraits of American composers.