National Gallery of Art

The National Gallery of Art was a prodigious gift from financier, art collector, and secretary of the treasury Andrew W. Mellon. Wanting America to have an exceptional national art museum, Mellon offered to donate his personal collection and to fund construction of such a museum. President Franklin D. Roosevelt endorsed his offer and an act of Congress in 1937 established the National Gallery of Art, which the U.S. government would preserve and make available to the public for free.

When the National Gallery was dedicated in 1941, it contained 126 paintings and 26 sculptures, including Raphael's Alba Madonna, Francisco de Goya's Marquesa de Pontejos, and Giovanni Bologna's Mercury. The museum's founding benefactors representing five families donated their private holdings to create "a collection of collections." The National Gallery does not grow its collection with government money; rather, thousands of philanthropists have donated works of art or funds over the years. Today, the museum houses a collection of more than 150,000 paintings, sculptures, decorative arts, photographs, prints, and drawings that illustrate the history of Western art. The institution also operates the acclaimed National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden, created in partnership with the National Park Service.