History and Description

The National Gallery of Art belongs to all the people of the UnitedStates of America. Established by a joint resolution of Congress, it issupported by public appropriation. The Board of Trustees consists offour public servants, ex officio, and five private citizens. Chairman ofthe Board is the Chief Justice of the United States. Under the policiesset by the Board, the Gallery assembles and maintains a collection ofpaintings, sculpture, and the graphic arts, representative of the best inthe artistic heritage of America and Europe. Supported in its dailyoperations by Federal funds, the Gallery is entirely dependent on thegenerosity of private citizens for the works of art in its collections.

Funds for the construction of the original building were providedby The A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust. During the1920s, Mr. Mellon began to collect with the intention of forming anational gallery of art in Washington. His collection was given to thenation in 1937, the year of his death. In 1941, President Franklin D.Roosevelt accepted the completed Gallery on behalf of the people ofthe United States of America.

Architect for the National Gallery was John Russell Pope, who alsodesigned the Jefferson Memorial and other outstanding public buildingsin Washington. The building is one of the largest marble structuresin the world, measuring 780 feet in length and containing morethan 500,000 square feet of interior floor space. The exterior is ofrose-white Tennessee marble. The columns in the Rotunda were quarriedin Tuscany, Italy. Green marble from Vermont and gray marblefrom Tennessee were used for the floor of the Rotunda. The interiorwalls are of Alabama Rockwood stone, Indiana limestone, and Italiantravertine. The entire building is air-conditioned and humidity-controlledthroughout the year to maintain the optimum atmosphericconditions for the works of art it contains.

The original building is no longer large enough to accommodate theGallery’s acquisitions and interpretive art programs. A second building,presently under construction, will house new exhibition galleries anda Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts. The two buildingswill be connected by a plaza above ground and by a concourse ofpublic service areas, including a new café/buffet, below. The newconstruction has been made possible by generous gifts from Mr. PaulMellon, the late Ailsa Mellon Bruce, and the Andrew W. MellonFoundation.

THE COLLECTIONS