If you’re an art lover, then you’ll appreciate the National Gallery of Art’s collection. The museum has an abundance of some of the finest works of art from major private collections.
The exhibition of the gallery, located in two buildings connected by an underground passage, spans the period from the Middle Ages to the present. These are paintings, sculptures and prints by famous American and European masters, as well as drawings donated to the museum by the U.S. government showing the history of American folk art and crafts.
The idea for the museum was born in the thirties of the last century. The foundation of its collection was laid by one of the richest men in the United States at that time Andrew William Mellon – a banker, manufacturer, and Secretary of the Treasury under three presidents. Mellon was a striking figure. Endowed with a rare flair for technological innovations (he supported Edward Acheson, the inventor of superhard abrasives), Mellon was also capable of unconventional moves in the economy. To raise state revenues, he demanded lower taxes – business would get a boost and, as a result, tax revenues would rise.
Mellon began collecting during World War I, and by the end of the twenties he decided that he would give the collection to the people. In the early thirties he learned that the Bolsheviks had begun to sell masterpieces of Western European masters from the Hermitage collection. Through intermediaries, Mellon bought 21 paintings from the Hermitage, including Van Eyck’s Annunciation and Raphael’s Madonna Alba. For this last painting he paid 1 million 166,400 dollars – then the highest price ever paid for a work of art. The deal stood out against the background of the criminal sale of many Hermitage pieces for literally pennies.
At first, Mellon wanted to give his collection to the Smithsonian Institution. But then the human factor intervened: President Roosevelt hated Mellon, against whom a lawsuit for tax evasion was initiated. The financier did not abandon his plans to give the collection to the people, but decided to give it to the new National Gallery of Art, for the construction of which he donated another 10 million dollars.
Mellon did not live to see his victory: the court acquitted him after his death in 1937, the gallery opened on the National Mall four years later. Roosevelt presided over the ceremony.
The museum occupies two buildings, a neoclassical western building and a modern eastern building built in 1978. Architect John Russell Pope topped the west building with a domed rotunda modeled after the Roman Pantheon.
The west building concentrates masterpieces by European masters, from the Middle Ages to the late 19th century. This main collection includes many paintings by Botticelli, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Titian, Rubens, El Greco, Monet and Van Gogh. The gem of the collection is the only work by Leonardo da Vinci outside Europe, the magnificent Ginevra de Benchi. Works by American artists from the early 20th century are also on display in the west building. The eastern building is devoted to contemporary art: Picasso, Matisse, Pollock and Warhol are widely represented there. Admission to the museum is free.
Across 7th street from the west building is the Sculpture Garden, opened in 1999. Here, outdoor sculptures from the museum’s contemporary collection are on display. In the center of the garden is a circular pond where a public skating rink is set up in the winter.
Well, tell me, what a museum trip can be without a visit to a treasure trove of art?
The sculptural masterpieces are displayed in the garden, which has a fountain in the center that is used as a skating rink in the winter.