National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art is an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in 1937 for the American people by a joint resolution of the United States Congress. Andrew W. Mellon donated a substantial art collection and funds for construction.
The core collection includes major works of art donated by Paul Mellon, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, Lessing J. Rosenwald, Samuel Henry Kress, Rush Harrison Kress, Peter Arrell Browne Widener, Joseph E. Widener, and Chester Dale. The Gallery's collection of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, medals, and decorative arts traces the development of Western art from the Middle Ages to the present and includes the largest mobile created by Alexander Calder.
The Gallery's campus includes the original neoclassical West Building designed by John Russell Pope, which is linked underground to the modernist East Building, designed by I. M. Pei, and is next to the Sculpture Garden. The Gallery often presents temporary special exhibitions spanning the world and the history of art. It is one of the largest museums in North America.
Attendance rose to nearly 4 million visitors in 2024, making it second on the list of most-visited museums in the United States. Of the top three art museums in the United States by annual visitors, it is the only one that has no admission fee.
History
Origins
, Pittsburgh banker and Treasury Secretary from 1921 until 1932, began gathering a private collection of old master paintings and sculptures during World War I. During the late 1920s, Mellon decided to direct his collecting efforts towards the establishment of a new national gallery for the United States.In 1930, partly for tax reasons, Mellon formed the A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, which was to be the legal owner of works intended for the gallery. In 1930–1931, the Trust made its first major acquisition, 21 paintings from the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg as part of the Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings, including such masterpieces as Raphael's Alba Madonna, Titian's Venus with a Mirror, and Jan van Eyck's Annunciation.
In 1929, Mellon initiated contact with the recently appointed Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Charles Greeley Abbot. In 1931, Mellon was appointed as a Commissioner of the Institution's National Gallery of Art. When the director of the Gallery retired, Mellon asked Abbot not to appoint a successor, as he proposed to endow a new building with funds for expansion of the collections.
Mellon's trial for tax evasion, centering on the Trust and the Hermitage paintings, caused the plan to be modified. In 1935, Mellon announced in The Washington Star his intention to establish a new gallery for old masters, separate from the Smithsonian. When asked by Abbot, he explained that the project was in the hands of the Trust and that its decisions were partly dependent on "the attitude of the Government towards the gift".
In January 1937, Mellon formally offered to create the new Gallery. On his birthday, 24 March 1937, an Act of Congress accepted the collection and building funds, and approved the construction of a museum on the National Mall.
The new gallery was to be effectively self-governing, although it is legally established as a bureau of the Smithsonian Institution. It took the old name "National Gallery of Art", while the Smithsonian's gallery would be renamed the "National Collection of Fine Arts".
Construction and later history
The museum stands on the former site of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station, where in 1881 a disgruntled office seeker, Charles Guiteau, shot President James Garfield. In 1908, the station was demolished because it did not conform to the McMillan Plan for the Mall. In 1918, temporary war buildings were constructed on the site; these were demolished by 1921 to construct the foundation of the George Washington Memorial Building, which was never completed. The site was then reassigned to the new National Gallery of Art.Designed by architect John Russell Pope, the new structure was completed and accepted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on behalf of the American people on March 17, 1941. At the time of its inception it was the largest marble structure in the world. Neither Mellon nor Pope lived to see the museum completed; both died in late August 1937, only two months after excavation had begun.
As anticipated by Mellon, the creation of the National Gallery encouraged the donation of other substantial art collections by a number of private donors. Founding benefactors included such individuals as Paul Mellon, Samuel H. Kress, Rush H. Kress, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, Chester Dale, Joseph Widener, Lessing J. Rosenwald and Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch.
The Gallery's East Building was constructed in the 1970s on much of the remaining land left over from the original congressional action. Andrew Mellon's children, Paul Mellon and Ailsa Mellon Bruce, funded the building. Designed by architect I. M. Pei, the contemporary structure was completed in 1978 and was opened on June 1 of that year by President Jimmy Carter. The new building was built to house the Museum's collection of modern paintings, drawings, sculptures, and prints, as well as study and research centers and offices. The design received a National Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects in 1981.
The final addition to the complex is the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden. Completed and opened to the public on May 23, 1999, the location provides an outdoor setting for exhibiting a number of large pieces from the Museum's contemporary sculpture collection.
In 2011, an extensive refurbishment and renovation of the French galleries were undertaken. As part of the celebration of the reopening of this wing, organist Alexander Frey performed 4 sold-out recitals of French music in one weekend in the French Gallery.
Operations
The National Gallery of Art is supported through a private-public partnership. The United States federal government provides funds, through annual appropriations, to support the museum's operations and maintenance. All artwork, as well as special programs, are provided through private donations and funds. The museum is not part of the Smithsonian Institution.Noted directors of the National Gallery have included David E. Finley, Jr., John Walker, and J. Carter Brown. Earl A. "Rusty" Powell III was named director in 1993. In March 2019 he was succeeded by Kaywin Feldman, past director and president of the Minneapolis Institute of Art. The museum hired Evelyn Carmen Ramos, the first woman and the first person of color to be the chief curatorial and conservation officer, in 2021.
The president of the museum is billionaire businessman Darren Walker and its chairperson is David Rubenstein.
Entry to both buildings of the National Gallery of Art is free of charge. The museum is open daily from 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. It is closed on December 25 and January 1.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Gallery was largely closed to the public. However, visitors were able to schedule appointments to access the West Building in small numbers.
Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts
The Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, the National Gallery of Art's research institute, was founded in 1979. The Center offers visiting professorships, a fellowship program, and undergraduate internship opportunities, as well as a publication program.The first dean of CASVA, architectural historian Henry A. Millon, was appointed in 1980. He was succeeded by Elizabeth Cropper in 2000. Steven Nelson became the third dean of CASVA in 2020.
Architecture
The museum comprises two buildings: the West Building and the East Building, linked by an underground passage. The West Building, composed of pink Tennessee marble, was designed in 1937 by architect John Russell Pope in a neoclassical style. Designed in the form of an elongated H, the building is centered on a domed rotunda modeled on the interior of the Pantheon in Rome. Extending east and west from the rotunda, a pair of skylit sculpture halls provide its main circulation spine. Bright garden courts provide a counterpoint to the long main axis of the building.The West Building has an extensive collection of paintings and sculptures by European masters from the medieval period through the late 19th century, as well as pre-20th century works by American artists. Highlights of the collection include paintings by Jan Vermeer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, and Leonardo da Vinci.
In contrast, the design of the East Building, by architect I. M. Pei, is geometrical, dividing the trapezoidal shape of the site into two triangles: one contains public galleries, and the other houses a library, offices, and a study center. The triangles establish a motif that is echoed throughout the building, realized in every dimension.
The East Building's central feature is a high atrium designed as an open interior court that is enclosed by a sculptural space spanning. The atrium is centered on the same axis that forms the circulation spine for the West Building and is constructed in the same Tennessee marble.
In 2005, the joints attaching the marble panels to the walls began to show signs of strain, creating a risk that panels might fall onto visitors below. In 2008, NGA officials decided that it had become necessary to remove and reinstall all of the panels. The renovation was completed in 2016.
The East Building focuses on modern and contemporary art, with a collection including works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Alexander Calder, a 1977 mural by Robert Motherwell and works by many other artists. The East Building also contains the main offices of the NGA and a large research facility, the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts. Among the highlights of the East Building in 2012 was an exhibition of Barnett Newman's The Stations of the Cross series of 14 black and white paintings. Newman painted them after he had recovered from a heart attack; they are usually regarded as the peak of his achievement. The series has also been seen as a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust.
The two buildings are connected by a walkway beneath 4th Street, called "the Concourse" on the museum's map. In 2008, the National Gallery of Art commissioned American artist Leo Villareal to transform the Concourse into an artistic installation. Multiverse is one of Villareal's largest and most complex light sculpture by light count, featuring approximately 41,000 computer-programmed LED nodes that run through channels along the entire -long space. The concourse also includes the food court and a gift shop.
The final element of the National Gallery of Art complex, the Sculpture Garden was completed in 1999 after more than 30 years of planning. To the west of the West Building, on the opposite side of Seventh Street, the Sculpture Garden was designed by landscape architect Laurie Olin as an outdoor gallery for monumental modern sculpture.
The Sculpture Garden contains plantings of Native American species of canopy and flowering trees, shrubs, ground covers, and perennials. A circular reflecting pool and fountain form the center of its design, which arching pathways of granite and crushed stone complement. The sculptures exhibited in the surrounding landscaped area include pieces by Marc Chagall, David Smith, Mark Di Suvero, Roy Lichtenstein, Sol LeWitt, Tony Smith, Roxy Paine, Joan Miró, Louise Bourgeois, and Hector Guimard.