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National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in 1937 for the American people by a joint resolution of the United States Congress. Andrew W. Mellon donated a substantial art collection and funds for construction. The core collection includes major works of art donated by Paul Mellon, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, Lessing J. Rosenwald, Samuel Henry Kress, Rush Harrison Kress, Peter Arrell Brown Widener, Joseph E. Widener, and Chester Dale. The Gallery's collection of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, medals, and decorative arts traces the development of Western Art from the Middle Ages to the present, including the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the Americas and the largest mobile created by Alexander Calder.
The Gallery's campus includes the original neoclassical West Building designed by John Russell Pope, which is linked underground to the modern East Building, designed by I. M. Pei, and the Sculpture Garden. The Gallery often presents temporary special exhibitions spanning the world and the history of art.
==History==
Pittsburgh banker (and Treasury Secretary from 1921 until 1932) Andrew W. Mellon began gathering a private collection of old master paintings and sculptures during World War I, but in the late 1920s he decided to direct his collecting efforts towards the establishment of a new national gallery for the United States. In 1930 Mellon formed the A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, which was to be the legal owner of works intended for the gallery. In 1930–1931, the Trust made its first major acquisition, 21 paintings from the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, including such masterpieces as Raphael's ''Alba Madonna,'' Titian's ''Venus with a Mirror'', and Jan van Eyck's ''The Annunciation''. (See also Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings). In 1929 Mellon had initiated contact with the recently appointed Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Charles Greeley Abbot, and in 1931 he was appointed a Commissioner of the Institution's National Gallery of Art. When the director of the Gallery retired, Mellon requested Abbot not to appoint a successor, because he proposed to endow a new building, with funds for expansion of the collections, which would, in effect, be a rebirth of the Gallery. Mellon's trial for tax evasion, centering on the Trust and the Hermitage paintings, caused the plan to be modified, and in 1935 he announced, in the ''Washington Star'', his intention to establish a new gallery for old masters, separate from the Smithsonian. When quizzed by Abbot, he explained that the project was in the hands of the Trust and that its decisions were partly dependent on "the attitude of the Government towards the gift". In January 1937, Mellon formally offered to create the new Gallery, and on his birthday, 24 March 1937, an Act of Congress accepted the collection and building funds (provided through the Trust), and approved the construction of a museum on the National Mall. The new gallery was to be effectively self-governing, not controlled by the Smithsonian, but took the old name "National Gallery of Art" while the Smithsonian's gallery would be renamed the "National Collection of Fine Arts" (now the Smithsonian American Art Museum).〔Fink, Lois Marie "A History of the Smithsonian American Art Museum", University of Massachusetts Press (2007) ISBN 978-1-55849-616-3, chapter 3〕〔(National Gallery of Art website: general introduction ) 〕〔(National Gallery of Art website: chronology ) 〕
Designed by architect John Russell Pope (who would go on to design the Jefferson Memorial), the new structure was completed and accepted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on behalf of the American people on March 17, 1941. Neither Mellon nor Pope lived to see the museum completed; both died in late August 1937, only two months after excavation had begun. At the time of its inception it was the largest marble structure in the world. The museum stands on the former site of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad station, most famous for being where 20th president James Garfield was shot in 1881 by Charles Guiteau, a disgruntled office seeker.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 title=National Gallery of Art, West
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