The National Gallery of Art belongs to all the people of the United
States of America. Established by a joint resolution of Congress, it is
supported by public appropriation. The Board of Trustees consists of
four public servants, _ex officio_, and five private citizens. Chairman
of the Board is the Chief Justice of the United States. Under the
policies set by the Board, the Gallery assembles and maintains a
collection of paintings, sculpture, and the graphic arts, representative
of the best in the artistic heritage of America and Europe. Supported in
its daily operations by Federal funds, the Gallery is entirely dependent
on the generosity of private citizens for the works of art in its
collections.
Funds for the construction of the original building were provided by The
A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust. During the 1920s, Mr.
Mellon began to collect with the intention of forming a national gallery
of art in Washington. His collection was given to the nation in 1937,
the year of his death. In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt accepted
the completed Gallery on behalf of the people of the United States of
America.
Architect for the National Gallery was John Russell Pope, who also
designed the Jefferson Memorial and other outstanding public buildings
in Washington. The building is one of the largest marble structures in
the world, measuring 780 feet in length and containing more than 500,000
square feet of interior floor space. The exterior is of rose-white
Tennessee marble. The columns in the Rotunda were quarried in Tuscany,
Italy. Green marble from Vermont and gray marble from Tennessee were
used for the floor of the Rotunda. The interior walls are of Alabama
Rockwood stone, Indiana limestone, and Italian travertine. The entire
building is air-conditioned and humidity-controlled throughout the year
to maintain the optimum atmospheric conditions for the works of art it
contains.
The original building is no longer large enough to accommodate the
Gallery’s acquisitions and interpretive art programs. A second building,
presently under construction, will house new exhibition galleries and a
Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts. The two buildings will be
connected by a plaza above ground and by a concourse of public service
areas, including a new café/buffet, below. The new construction has been
made possible by generous gifts from Mr. Paul Mellon, the late Ailsa
Mellon Bruce, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.