Queries

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 2003 by Remi Spriggs

WORKING INITIALLY AS A landscape painter in New York City and Washington, D.C., in the 1840s and 1850s, William Douglas MacLeod (1811-1892) served as the first curator of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington beginning in November 1873. He maintained journals that described the daily administration of the gallery from 1876 to 1884 and for 1886. MacLeod retired from the Corcoran on July 1, 1889, and died three years later. The Corcoran Gallery is working to annotate, index, and publish MacLeod's journals under the auspices of a grant from the National Archives and Records Administration. The gallery is also planning an exhibition of MacLeod's artwork for 2005 and is seeking paintings and works on paper by him, in addition to photographs and other documentary material about MacLeod and his family. Information about his work as a painter and a museum curator would be particularly valuable. Readers with relevant information are requested to contact:

Marisa Bourgoin

Archivist, Corcoran Gallery of Art

500 17th Street, N. W.

Washington, D.C. 20006