The National Gallery of Art (NGA) museum is a Washington D.C. educative institution that preserves, collects, and displays American and European paintings, sculptures, photographs, works of art on paper, and decorative arts, dating from the Middle Ages to the present. The Gallery houses and cares for more than 120,000 works of art and hosts about 4.6 million visitors annually.

In the 1920s, financier and U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Andrew W. Mellon began collecting paintings and sculptures with the objective of exhibiting the artwork in a new building he wished to endow to the Smithsonian’s National Gallery of Art. His plans changed, however, when he was put on trial for tax evasion relating to his trust fund and one of its major artwork acquisitions. Instead, he sought to use his collection to establish an art gallery on the National Mall in Washington D. C.—separate from the Smithsonian, but adopting the “National Gallery of Art” name—with the hope that his efforts would attract similar contributions from other collectors. (When Mellon took the name, the Smithsonian renamed its gallery National Collection of Fine Art, and later changed it to Smithsonian American Art Museum.) Shortly before he died, Mellon promised his collection to the United States, and in 1937 a joint resolution of Congress created the National Gallery of Art as an independent organization. The A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust provided funds for the construction of the museum (the NGA West Building), which its architect, John Russell Pope, designed to be the largest marble structure in the world. Built at the site where President James Garfield was assassinated in 1881, the museum was never seen by Pope or Mellon, both of whom died in August 1937, only two months after groundbreaking. In March 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt accepted the completed building and Mellon’s collection on behalf of the U.S. people. Soon thereafter, as Mellon had hoped, hundreds of other collections started flowing in, and the museum began flourishing.

In 1942, the museum’s most valuable works of art were evacuated to a site in North Carolina for wartime protection, where they remained for two years. In 1948, 202 paintings from Berlin museums were put on display and drew one million visitors. In 1963, the museum placed on display the Mona Lisa, which was loaned by the government of France. The first Western paintings ever allowed to leave the USSR were exhibited in 1973, and the following year, an exhibit of archeological finds loaned by the People’s Republic of China drew 700,000 visitors. In 1976, the Treasures of Tutankhamun made its U.S. debut at the National Gallery of Art. The Gallery’s East Building, located on land set aside in the original Congressional resolution, opened in 1978, funded by a combination of the Mellon Trust and additional contributions from his family. In 1999, adjacent to the West Building, the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden was created as an outdoor addition to the museum.

Highlights of the Gallery’s History

The National Gallery of Art (NGA) houses an extensive, constantly expanding collection, including works from many world-renowned masters, including Leonardo da Vinci, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso, and Rembrandt. Comprised of an East and West Building, connected by an underground passage, and an adjacent sculpture garden, the museum is located on the National Mall in Washington D.C. Admission is free to the public, and it’s open every day but Christmas and New Year’s Day, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Among the museum activities:

• Displays works of art from the Middle Ages to the present; lends some of its collections to other institutions; and borrows some from other museums and organizations, for exhibition in Washington D.C.
• Fosters an understanding of works of art by conducting research related to its collections, as well as the history and appreciation of art in general, through its Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, and by its curators; then, NGA disseminates the resulting information to the public.
• Operates the Art Research Library, a national art research center that contains a collection of more than 300,000 books, periodicals, and documents on the history, theory, and criticism of art and architecture, with emphasis on Western art from the Middle Ages to the present.
• Maintains archival resource files on all paintings, sculptures, and works of decorative art in the permanent collection, including official documents, publications, correspondence, and exhibition and history of ownership information.
• Preserves its collections through conservation programs that include environmental control, building maintenance, and top-level security.
• Runs a Scientific Research Department, staffed with experts in the fields of art history, botany, chemistry, and conservation, who research and develop new materials for use in the conservation of works of art, and investigate the methods and materials of artists.
• Offers school tours of the museum as well as educational film programs and lectures and horticulture displays.
• Provides, on its Web site, online museum tours of decorative arts, paintings, photographs, sculptures, and works on paper, along with accompanying files that can be downloaded in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish.

From the Web Site of the NGA

Visiting

Plan a Visit

Programs and Events

Calendar of Events

Family Activities

School Tours

Lectures

The Collection

The Collection

Exhibitions

Film Programs

Recent Acquisitions

General

Contact Information

Education

Employment Opportunities

Frequently asked Questions: Art Information

Gallery Shop

NGA Kids

Resources

Videos and Podcasts

What’s New

The National Gallery of Art (NGA) FY 2013 Budget Request reports that its $143 million in federal appropriations will be earmarked as follows:

Salaries and Expenses (including compensation, benefits, travel, rent, communications,

            printing, supplies, equipment, misc services)                                    $120,000,000

Building Repair, Restoration and Renovation                                      $23,000,000

Total Budget                                                                                        $143,000,000

According to USASpending.gov, during the past decade the NGA spent $220,429,605 on 1,560 transactions for services ranging from engineering development ($60,144,661) and building/exhibit construction ($33,767,122) to operating systems development ($18,777,992) and A&E management engineering ($10,286,667).

The top five contractor recipients of NGA spending since 2002 are:

1. Balfour Beatty/Smoot A Joint Venture                                                      $59,730,204

2. Grunley Walsh US LLC                                                                             $20,606,166

3. Whiting Turner Contracting                                                                        $13,031,008

4. EMCOR Group Inc.                                                                                     $9,703,100

5. The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company                                                 $9,542,534

David E. Finley

John Walker

J. Carter Brown