The National Gallery of Art, as well as its adjoining Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum located in Washington, D.C., Columbia, United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. The museum is open to the public and free to enter. The museum was established privately in 1937 to benefit the American citizens by a joint resolution by Congress. United States Congress. Andrew W. Mellon donated an extensive art collection and money for the construction. The collection comprises significant artworks donated to the gallery by Paul Mellon, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, Lessing J. Rosenwald, Samuel Henry Kress, Rush Harrison Kress, Peter Arrell Browne Widener, Joseph E. Widener as well as Chester Dale. The Gallery’s collection includes paintings as well as prints, drawings and photographs, and sculptures, as well as medals and other fine arts that trace the evolution of Western Art from the Middle Ages until the present day and including the solo work created by Leonardo da Vinci in the Americas and the largest of the mobiles created by Alexander Calder.
The Gallery’s campus comprises a historic neoclassical West Building, designed by John Russell Pope, linked underground to the contemporary East Building, designed by I. M. Pei, and the 6.1-acre (25,000 square meters) Sculpture Garden. The Gallery frequently hosts special exhibits covering the world and art development. It is among the biggest art museums in North America.
The scope, depth, and scale of its collection The National Gallery is widely considered one of the most important art museums in the United States of America, frequently ranked alongside those of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts. The National Gallery is among the annual visitors’ three most visited museums of art in the United States. It has the sole one that charges no admission fees. In 2021, it drew 1,704,606 people and was ranked 5th on the list of top art museums that are most visited worldwide. EZ Bed Bug Exterminator Washington DC
History
Andrew W. Mellon, Pittsburgh banker and Treasury Secretary from 1921 to 1932, began accumulating his private collection of masterworks of art and sculptures in World War I. In the late 1920s, Mellon decided to steer his collection efforts toward establishing an all-new national gallery for the United States. In 1930, due to tax reasons, Mellon formed the A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust were to become the legal owner of the artworks destined to be displayed in the gallery. Between 1930 and the 31st year, The Trust completed its first major purchase, 21 works from the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg as part of the Soviet auction of Hermitage paintings, which included works by Raphael, such as Alba Madonna, Titian’s Venus with a Mirror along with the Jan van Eyck’s Annunciation.
In 1929, Mellon contacted the newly named Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Charles Greeley Abbot. Mellon was appointed in 1931 as the Commissioner of the institution’s National Gallery of Art. The director in charge of the Gallery quit, and Mellon asked Abbot not to name a successor since he wanted to fund a new building with funds to increase the collection. However, the trial of Mellon for tax evasion that focused on his involvement in the Trust and the Hermitage paintings led to that plan being changed. It was in 1935 that Mellon made public in The Washington Star his plans to create an additional gallery to exhibit the older masters that were separate from Smithsonian. When questioned by Abbot Mellon, he stated that the project was the responsibility of the Trust and that the Trust’s decision-making was partly influenced by “the attitude of the Government towards the gift.”
Address: Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, DC, CO
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