National Gallery of Art (redirected from National Gallery of Art, Washington)

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, established by act of Congress, Mar. 24, 1937. Andrew W. Mellon donated funds for construction of the building as well as his own collection of 130 American portraits. The marble building was designed by John Russell Pope; it was opened in Mar., 1941. The east wing, designed by I. M. Pei, was completed in 1978. Other works in the gallery include Samuel H. Kress's collection of Italian masterpieces, the Joseph E. Widener Collection, the Chester Dale Collection, the Lessing J. Rosenwald collection of drawings and prints, the Edgar W. and Bernice C. Garbisch collection of 175 American naive paintings (given since 1953); and the Paul Mellon collection of portraits of Native Americans by George Catlin (given 1968). The gallery's paintings number more than 1,200. The collection is especially rich in Italian, French, and American works. The government turned over to the gallery the Index of American Design, consisting of about 20,000 drawings and watercolors illustrating the history of American crafts and folk art.

Bibliography

See H. Cairns and J. Walker, ed., A Pageant of Painting from the National Gallery of Art (2 vol., 1966); M. Wilson, The National Gallery (1984).

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National Gallery of Art

Museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. It was founded in 1937 when Andrew W. Mellon donated his collection of European paintings to the U.S. He also donated funds to construct the gallery's Neoclassical building, opened in 1941. Now known as the West Building, it is connected by plaza and underground concourse to the East Building, designed by I.M. Pei (completed 1978). The museum houses an extensive collection of U.S. and European paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, and graphic arts from the 12th to 21st centuries; especially well represented are works by Italian Renaissance, 17th-century Dutch, and 18th- and 19th-century French artists.