Portrait of Barry Goldwater by Burton Silverman

Barry Goldwater, late senator from Arizona and longtime Smithsonian supporter, would have celebrated his 101st birthday on January 1.

Goldwater’s loss to Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 presidential election was a setback to the far right wing of the Republican Party, but his candidacy foreshadowed the GOP’s shift toward a more conservative base, a shift that would eventually propel Ronald Reagan to the White House.

Former NPG historian Maggie Christman states:

Out of Barry Goldwater’s losing campaign in 1964 came the Reagan revolution of 1980 and by happenstance brought Barry Goldwater into an official connection with the National Portrait Gallery.  In keeping with the recommendation of Smithsonian Secretary Dillon Ripley, the chairman of the Portrait Gallery’s Commission customarily came from the Smithsonian Board of Regents. Goldwater, a Regent since 1977, was chosen as a replacement for the Democrat who had lost his election and with it his appointment as a Regent from the Senate.

Previously Goldwater—an ardent photographer of the landscape and people of Arizona—had helped with the passage of the January 1976 bill giving the Portrait Gallery the right to collect photographs. He remained on the Commission long enough to shepherd a bill through the Congress allowing the Portrait Gallery to acquire the Frederick Hill Meserve collection of 4,419 glass-plate negatives from the Mathew Brady studio, but resigned on April 21, 1982. “It has become perfectly obvious to me that I have neither the time nor the background nor the ability to continue as Chairman of the National Portrait Gallery,” he wrote in his characteristic blunt and honest way. “My concern and my interest is entirely in western art, and I have never been able to bring myself around to becoming excited about art of any other type.”

Goldwater’s primary contribution to the Smithsonian was recognized in 1987 when, at a dinner in the Portrait Gallery’s Hall of Presidents, he was presented with the Samuel P. Langley Gold Medal for his lifelong contribution to aviation and his seminal role in the building of the National Air and Space Museum.

Goldwater was a conservative’s conservative. His campaign button in 1964 (below) read, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Goldwater died in 1998.
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