Chief Justice John Roberts gives opening remarks at building dedication. Smithsonian Secretary Larry Small and Fred W. Smith, Chairman of the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation are at his left. Photo by Jeff Gates.
Smithsonian Institution Secretary Larry Small, Smithsonian American Art Museum director Elizabeth Broun, and National Portrait Gallery director Marc Pachter assembled Wednesday for the dedication of the building that houses the two museums: the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture. A wooden model of the building was given to the Donald W. Reynolds foundation, after whom the building is named (in light of the foundation’s patronage). “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band Brass Quintet played as the Joint Armed Forces Color Guard presented colors; the commencement from the auditorium was led by a fife and drum corps from Colonial Williamsburg.
The keynote speaker was the Chancellor of the Smithsonian Institution. Not many people know that the Chancellor’s position (the only federal chancellery) is held by the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court—as you might have guessed from the pic of John Roberts above.
Roberts spoke about the history of the building, noting that, when the seat of the government was relocated from Philadelphia to Washington, buildings were provided for the executive branch (the White House) and the legislative branch (the Capitol). But the third federal building built during Andrew Jackson’s presidency was not the Supreme Courthouse—it was the Patent Office Building, present home to both museums. (As Coolidge later put it, the business of America is business.)
Roberts went on to say that the terms of public patent grants held that patent owners must publicly disclose how their inventions worked, leading eventually to the museum’s remarkable Victorian Renaissance patent galleries. He said that there are similarities between the building’s former purpose and its current use, as a place where objects are collected for shared learning.
In his speech, the Chancellor highlighted several other historical and architectural characteristics of the building: its role as a military barracks during the Civil War and as the site of Lincoln’s second inaugural ball on March 6, 1865; the pair of skylights the length of a city block, originally designed by Robert Mills and now restored after being obscured for decades; and the building’s significance as the capital’s original host of such artifacts as the Declaration of Independence and George Washington’s sword.
Chief Justice Roberts wooed with humor, but I’m sure he won over the crowd by quoting Constantin Brancusi: “Architecture is inhabited sculpture.” So it has been at this site since the building’s first stone was set in 1836.
