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BISMARCK, N.D. — Visitors to the North Dakota Capitol enter a spacious hall lined with portraits of the Peace Garden State’s famous faces. But the gleaming gallery is nearly out of room.
Bandleader Lawrence Welk, singer Peggy Lee and actress Angie Dickinson are among the 49 recipients of the Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Award in the North Dakota Hall of Fame, where Capitol tours start. The most recent addition to the collection — a painting of former NASA astronaut James Buchli — was hung on Wednesday.
State Facility Management Division Director John Boyle said the gallery is close to full and he wants the question of where new portraits will be displayed resolved before he retires in December after 22 years. An uncalculated number of portraits would have to be inched together in the current space to fit a 50th inductee, Boyle said.
Institutions elsewhere that were running out of space — including the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall, the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s Plaque Gallery — found ways to expand their collections by rearranging their displays or adding space.
Boyle said there are a couple of options for the Capitol collection, including hanging new portraits in a nearby hallway or on the 18th-floor observation deck, likely seeded with four or five current portraits so a new one isn’t displayed alone.
Some portraits have been moved around over the years to make more room. The walls of the gallery are lined with blocks of creamy, marble-like Yellowstone travertine. The pictures hang on hooks placed in the seams of the slabs.
Eight portraits were unveiled when the hall of fame was dedicated in 1967, according to Bismarck Tribune archives. Welk was the first award recipient, in 1961.
Many of the lighted portraits were painted by Vern Skaug, an artist who typically includes scenery or objects key to the subject’s life.
Inductees are not announced with specific regularity, but every year or two a new one is named. The Rough Rider Award “recognizes North Dakotans who have been influenced by this state in achieving national recognition in their fields of endeavor, thereby reflecting credit and honor upon North Dakota and its citizens,” according to the award’s webpage.
The governor chooses recipients with the concurrence of the secretary of state and State Historical Society director. Inductees receive a print of the portrait and a small bust of Roosevelt, who hunted and ranched in the 1880s in what is now western North Dakota before he was president.
Gov. Doug Burgum has named six people in his two terms, most recently Buchli in May. Burgum, a wealthy software entrepreneur, is himself a recipient. The first inductee Burgum named was Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent who jumped on the back of the presidential limousine during the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 in Dallas.
The state’s Capitol Grounds Planning Commission would decide where future portraits will be hung. The panel is scheduled to meet Tuesday, but the topic is not on the agenda and isn’t expected to come up.
The North Dakota Capitol was completed in 1934. The building’s Art Deco interior features striking designs, lighting and materials.
The peculiar “Monkey Room” has wavy, wood-paneled walls where visitors can spot eyes and outlines of animals, including a wolf, rabbit, owl and baboon.
The House of Representatives ceiling is lit as the moon and stars, while the Senate’s lighting resembles a sunrise. Instead of a dome, as other statehouses have, the North Dakota Capitol rises in a tower containing state offices. In December, many of its windows are lit red and green in the shape of a Christmas tree.
