CRAMMED IN MUSEUM

The House granted the $400,000, which appears assured of Senate approval. Paintings, ceramics, prints, and sculptures of the collection now are crammed among the stuffed elephants and plaster Eskimos of the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum. The collection, with a board of its own, accommodates native artists by exhibiting their works in the foyer. History, not art, sets the mood of this museum.

The National Portrait Gallery still has no board of its own. But it has been a favorite concept, if not an organ, of the Smithsonian for a century. The Clark collection of portraits of Americans of the 18th and 19th centuries by prominent American artists has been envisioned as the nucleus of a national portrait gallery. Most of the Clark paintings are stored in the basement of the National Gallery of Art, which displays work-mostly European-primarily of artistic rather than historical interest.

Although many of the works in the portrait collection are considered of finer quality than those of the fine arts collection, history, not art, sets their mood. It is this conflict between artistic and historical art that disturbs the Art League.

PORTRAITS WOULD GAIN

And the Smithsonian's predisposition for history and science instead of art is the real danger league members see in a new bill introduced by powerful Senators Anderson, Democrat of New Mexico, and Saltonstall, Republican of Massachusetts. Both are regents of the Smithsonian.

At the request of the Smithsonian, they sponsored legislation to create a board, controlled by Smithsonian Regents, for the National Portrait Gallery. This board could use "the whole or any part" of the Patent Building for the Portrait Gallery.

Should the board decide to use "the whole" the National Portrait Gallery would squeeze the National Collection of Fine Arts right out of the Old Patent Building, League President Francis Peters reasoned.

Yet, the building is eminently suited for a gallery to show off and to improve the quality of American art, the league is convinced. An architectural treasure itself, the building is to be transferred to the Smithsonian under a 1958 law when its present occupant-the Civil Service Commission—vacates. The CSC is due to move into a new building in 1963.

American Architect Robert Mills, who designed the Washington Monument and the Treasury Building, fashioned the Old Patent Office Building in Greek revival style. The two-block site downtown, bounded by Seventh, Ninth, F and G Streets NW., was set aside in the L'Enfant plan of 1791 for an "American Pantheon."

FEARS CALLED UNFOUNDED

Senator Anderson said the league fears were unfounded. It would be impractical to section off the Patent Building, one-half for the collection and another for the Portrait Gallery, he said.

He cited language in the congressional reports on the 1958 transfer law saying that the Patent Building would be used for both collections.

Hardened by past disappointments, the league has yet to be convinced. Members have thrown their support instead behind a bill sponsored by Senator Humphrey, Democrat of Minnesota, creating a Portrait Gallery Board headed by the Chairman of the Board of the National Collection. Further, the Humphrey bill would limit Portrait Gallery occupancy of the Patent Building to half of the space.

Cosponsors of the Humphrey bill are Democratic Senators Williams of New Jersey and Long of Missouri and Representative McDowell of Delaware.

LAW SEEN NEEDLESS

Some league members feel no legislation is required at all.

Congress in a 1938 resolution called for establishment of a suitable gallery for national collections of "fine arts, comprising paintings, sculptures, bronzes, glass, porcelain, tapestry, furniture, jewelry, and other types of art." Also, the gallery would house portraits of eminent Americans and exhibit works of artists deserving recognition, the resolution said.

But the resolution fixed a site along the Mall now occupied by the new Smithsonian Air Museum for the gallery.

The intent of the resolution protects the National Collection of Fine Arts in a new gallery-now proposed in the Patent Building-according to one view. But to the majority of league members, the fact that the Smithsonian built an air museum on one art gallery site hints that the pattern could be repeated by history nosing out art again in the Patent Building.

[From the New York Times, Saturday, May 13, 1961]

CAPITAL TO HAVE ITS SHAKESPEARE-FREE PARK PRODUCTIONS ARE PLANNED THIS SUMMER

(By Louis Calta)

Washington, like New York, will have its free Shakespeare in the park this summer. The founder and organizer of the venture is Ellie Chamberlain, who once worked with Joseph Papp's Shakespeare Festival in Central Park.

Yesterday Miss Chamberain explained that her association with Mr. Papp's group had been the motivating element for the capital project. The plan she has chosen for the first season is "Twelfth Night," which will open July 1 for a 2-week run.

The classic will be played at the Sylvan Theater, a 1,500-seat outdoor theater set in a grove of trees and shrubbery about 2 blocks from the White House and about 100 paces from the base of the Washington Monument.

The Department of Interior is providing the theater and maintenance and the District of Columbia Recreation Department will supply the equipment. Production costs are being met by private donations. These will be supplemented by a recently launched dollar drive.

Among those who already have responded to the drive, according to Miss Chamberlain, are Robert Frost, Laurence Olivier, Mr. Papp and Richard L. Coe, drama critic for the Washington Post.

All of the actors, Miss Chamberlain explained, have volunteered to perform without pay in the expectation of improving on their art. Rehearsals are scheduled to start May 29.

[From the Evening Star, Washington, D.C., Friday, Mar. 17, 1961] SHAKESPEARE FETE PLANNED

ACTRESS DREAMED IT UP, MEANS TO MAKE
IT ANNUAL

(By Amelia Young)

If Ellie Chamberlain gets her way, the Nation's Capital will have its own Shakespearean Festival every summer beginning in 1961.

Ellie is a local actress-director turned entrepreneur who means to stage a festival this July no matter how she has to do it.

She plans to put on "Twelfth Night" for a 2- or 3-week run, using the best of area talent and drawing on the National Capital Parks and the D.C. Recreation Department for assistance.

Already she has received permission to use the Sylvan Theater on the Washington Monument grounds, pending final arrangements, and the Parks Department has agreed to put up seats for an audience of 1,500.

Ellie's dream is to raise $5,000 to cover the production costs (lighting, costumes, scenery) and she is applying for a license to solicit donations. The actors will not be paid and the public will not be charged. This is strictly a nonprofit venture.

Should she fail to collect the full amount, Ellie said, she'll have to rely heavily on imagination-but the show will go on.

WORTHY PRECEDENT

For example, if necessary the company will perform on weekend afternoons without any stage lighting at all. "We would have a valid precedent for this," she said. "Shakespeare's own company performed in full daylight."

And the scenery could be reduced to just the suggestion of a set. "Scenery should be simple, anyway. I feel. It's there to enhance the mood and quality of a production, but it shouldn't be heavy. It shouldn't interfere. So the

scenery, as such, is not going to be too important. We could almost dispense with it."

"In other words," Ellie added, "we can make a virtue of necessity."

So far Ellie's project exists on handsome letterhead stationery that proclaims the "Shakespeare Festival of Washington" with her address printed beneath it. To the left, in small letters, the type reads "Ellie Chamberlain, Managing Director."

She has formed a small fundraising committee that will seek contributions chiefly by direct contact, and has assembled the major portion of a company that will number 30 or 40 people, including the technicians.

The Recreation Department, she said, has promised to "sponsor" the event, which means it will help to promote it and provide some technical and administrative assistance.

A

The idea for the festival has been nagging at Ellie for at least a year. native New Yorker who moved here 2 years ago with her husband, Panos Gildas, she has been all over the lot in local little theater, both acting and directing. (She is director of "The Current View From the Bridge" production at the Capitol Hill Theater.)

CREATING AN OUTLET

It appears to Ellie there's plenty of real acting talent around but no highcaliber outlet for it, "What I'm after," she explained, "is good quality theater absolutely comparable to professional stuff." As it is now, Washington has "amateur theater that only your friends and relatives come to, and professional theater that is closed to most local talent."

The festival company will be what she describes as "nonequity but professional-professional, that is, in its artistic standards. I'm getting actors who take their acting seriously, who think of it as a job rather than a hobby." Almost all those chosen so far have at some time been involved in professional theater.

Ellie, a scholarship graduate of the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York (which produced Eli Wallach, Jo Van Fleet, and Gregory Peck among others), attended the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford, England, the summer of 1955. Three summers later, after appearing in a number of off-Broadway shows, she joined the company of the Central Park Shakespeare Festival. That remarkably successful company, which grew out of an actor's reading group, is the model for Ellie's project.

She hopes to do what they have done produce enough excitement to attract the best directors and set designers in future seasons. "There are noted directors who want to work on Shakespeare and haven't much opportunity. If we make the shows good enough, they'll want to come down."

It

"The first season is always hard," she added. "Everybody has to really pitch in. But if we make a success of it, then it will be something that exists. won't be just in the realm of dream of vision or idea."

[From the Congressional Record, Mar. 24, 1960]

AMENDMENT OF PUBLIC BUILDINGS ACT OF 1959, RELATING TO LOCATION OF CERTAIN COURTS IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I introduce, for appropriate reference, a bill to amend the Public Buildings Act of 1959 to authorize a study for the purpose of determining the feasibility of locating the Court of Claims, the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, and the Tax Court of the United States near the Supreme Court.

These three courts have all outgrown their present locations. There is pending before the Public Works Committee a plan to locate the Court of Claims in Lafayette Square. This means that many of the historic buildings now fronting that square will be torn down. The Dolly Madison House, the Benjamin Taylor House, and the Belasco Theater have long served as an inspiration to generations of Americans who have visited their Capital City. Certainly, before any irrevocable action is taken to destroy these buildings to provide a site for a courthouse, other sites should be investigated.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an editorial which appeared in the Washington Post last Friday, entitled "Courthouse Politics." The PRESIDING OFFICER. The bill will be received and appropriately referred; and, without objection, the editorial will be printed in the Record.

The bill (S. 3280) to amend the Public Buildings Act of 1959 so as to authorize a study for the purpose of determining the feasibility of locating the Court of Claims, the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, and the Tax Court of the United States near the Supreme Court of the United States, and for other purposes, introduced by Mr. Kennedy, was received, read twice by its title, and referred to the Committee on Public Works.

(The editorial presented by Mr. Kennedy is as follows:)

[From the Washington Post, Mar. 18, 1960]

COURTHOUSE POLITICS

A choice corner fronting on Lafayette Square is swiftly becoming a site for sore eyes (of Texas) as a result of a quarrel involving three courts all in search of a new home. All the courts-the Courts of Claims, Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, and Tax Court-are in urgent need of more space. On this there is little dispute. The plight of the Court of Claims is especially desperate; because the court deals only with cases involving the Government, its docket has grown at an awesome rate (6,000 cases are now pending) while its quarters have failed to keep pace.

But is Lafayette Square the appropriate site for a courthouse? Chief Judge Marvin Jones of the Court of Claims contends that his bench should be given sole occupancy of the site on Madison Place and H Street NW. now occupied by the old Belasco Theater and Dolley Madison House. Judge Jones, a former Texas Congressman, points out that the General Services Administration has assigned the site to his court and that the House Public Works Committee has endorsed the move.

At this point, Chief Judge Eugene Worley, of the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, enters a sharp dissent. His court, too, is in dire need of more space and he proposes the addition of 30,000 square feet to the Lafayette Square edifice so that both courts could be housed together. Chief Judge Worley, also a former Texas Congressman, feels this could be done with a minimum of delay. And doubtless it would be desirable if another 90,000 square feet could be found for the Tax Court.

To a bewildered bystander, one alternative seems clear. The needs of all the courts could be met adequately in a "judiciary square" on the east side of the Supreme Court Building. This is the proposal previously endorsed by both the National Capital Planning Commission and the Fine Arts Commission. Not only would it mean that an area could be created which would comport with judicial dignity (the buildings, perhaps, could be grouped around an Oliver Wendell Holmes Memorial Park) but also that Lafayette Square could then be preserved for an executive use more in keeping with its historical values and its proximity to the White House.

Granted that such a change in plans would mean further delay, and granted that the location might be more inconvenient for the Court of Claims, we still think the idea of grouping the courts in a more suitable site deserves further consideration before the bulldozers begin their work. To meet the problems of delay, surely further space in other Government buildings or leased private quarterscould be found on a short-term basis.

[From the Congressional Record, Mar. 24, 1960]

AMENDMENT OF PUBLIC BUILDINGS ACT OF 1959, RELATING TO LOCATION FOR NEW U.S. COURT OF CLAIMS BUILDING

Mr. MORSE. Mr. President, in an editorial on March 18, the Washington Post called attention again to the plans going forward to use the sites surrounding Lafayette Park, now occupied by several historic structures, for construction of a new office building to house the Court of Claims and the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals.

No one can deny that the workload of these courts makes it imperative that they be provided with expanded quarters. But I entirely share the objection of the Washington Post to using the sites around Lafayette Park for that purpose. A much better idea is the one offered by the Post that they be grouped around the U.S. Supreme Court Building as recommended by the National Capital Planning Commission and the Fine Arts Commission.

I ask unanimous consent to have this editorial from the Washington Post printed at this point in my remarks.

(There being no objection, the editorial was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:)

[From the Washington Post, Mar. 18, 1960]

COURTHOUSE POLICIES

A choice corner fronting on Lafayette Square is swiftly becoming a site for sore eyes (of Texas) as a result of a quarrel involving three courts all in search of a new home. All the courts-the Court of Claims, Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, and Tax Court-are in urgent need of more space. On this there is little dispute. The plight of the Court of Claims is especially desperate; because the court deals only with cases involving the Government, its docket has grown at an awesome rate (6,000 cases are now pending) while its quarters have failed to keep pace.

But is Lafayette Square the appropriate site for a courthouse? Chief Judge Marvin Jones of the Court of Claims contends that his bench should be given sole occupancy of the site on Madison Place and H Street NW. now occupied by the old Belasco Theater and Dolly Madison house. Judge Jones, a former Texas Congressman, points out that the General Services Administration has assigned the site to his court and that the House Public Works Committee has endorsed the move.

At this point, Chief Judge Eugene Worley of the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, enters a sharp dissent. His court, too, is in dire need of more space and he proposes the addition of 30,000 square feet to the Lafayette Square edifice so that both courts could be housed together. Chief Judge Worley, also a former Texas Congressman, feels this could be done with a minimum of delay. And doubtless it would be desirable if another 90,000 square feet could be found for the Tax Court.

To a bewildered bystander, one alternative seems clear. The needs of all the courts could be met adequately in a "judiciary square" on the east side of the Supreme Court Building. This is the proposal previously endorsed by both the National Capital Planning Commission and the Fine Arts Commission. Not only would it mean that an area could be created which would comport with judicial dignity (the buildings, perhaps, could be grouped around an Oliver Wendell Holmes Memorial Park) but also that Lafayette Square could then be preserved for an executive use more in keeping with its historical values and its proximity to the White House.

Granted that such a change in plans would mean further delay, and granted that the location might be more inconvenient for the Court of Claims, we still think the idea of grouping the courts in a more suitable site deserves further consideration before the bulldozers begin their work. To meet the problems of delay, surely further space in other Government buildings-or leased private quarters-could be found on a short-term basis.

Mr. MORSE. Mr. President, in order to get a restudy of the question of locating the needed new courthouses, I introduce, for appropriate reference, a bill directing the General Services Administration to bring together recommendations from itself, the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts to determine the feasibility of a "judiciary square" proposal. These recommendations would be brought back to the House and Senate Committees on Public Works for further action.

The old Belasco Theater is one of the buildings which would be razed if the new courthouse were constructed on the square. The February 21, 1960, issue of the Post carried an editorial on the Belasco Theater and its place in the history of Washington. I ask unanimous consent to have this editorial, too, appear at this point in my remarks.