Despite the strong beginning represented by the Marsh Collection purchase, the fortunes of art within the Smithsonian declined as scientific interests overtook museum and library programs. Following a serious fire in 1865, the library and print collections were deposited at the Library of Congress. For nearly twenty years art-related programs and collections were suspended, although a residue of the Marsh Collection survived, framed and distributed among various offices. By the 1880s the impetus of international exhibitions and the growth of natural history collections had reinvigorated museum programs within the Institution, and graphic arts collections again were being solicited and shown.

Samuel Pierpont Langley, named Smithsonian Secretary in 1888, established an Art Room and recalled the prints and other art works that had been dispersed to the Library of Congress and later to the Corcoran Gallery of Art. A decade of important acquisitions and exhibitions directed by graphic arts curator Sylvester Rosa Koehler and Assistant Secretary George Brown Goode between about 1886 and 1896 provided a strong foundation for 20th-century graphic arts programs.