National Gallery of Art

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National Gallery of Art, West Building
View from top of Newseum

Designed by architect John Russell Pope, the 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.

Nov 2016, Photo 108

National Gallery of Art, West Building
View from top of Newseum

Nov 2016, Photo 102

National Gallery of Art, East Building
View from top of Newseum

The design of the East Building by architect I. M. Pei is rigorously geometrical, dividing the trapezoidal shape of the site into two triangles: one isosceles and the other a smaller right triangle. The space defined by the isosceles triangle came to house the museum's public functions. That outlined by the right triangle became the study center. The triangles in turn became the building's organized motif, echoed and repeated in every dimension. The building's most dramatic feature is its high atrium designed as an open interior court, it is enclosed by a sculptural space frame spanning 16,000 square feet.

Nov 2016, Photo 109

National Gallery of Art, West Wing

Inside the two huge buildings that sprawl along the Constitution Avenue side of the Mall between Third and Seventh streets NW is a permanent collection of more than 100,000 art objects from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. Throughout its maze-like warren of more than 150 individual gallery rooms, you'll find art that looks as disparate as the museum's two distinctive wings themselves: To the west lies architect John Russell Pope's original 1941 building, housing paintings, sculpture and graphic arts from as far back as the Middle Ages. Twentieth-century art is exhibited at I.M. Pei's jarringly angular 1978 East Building that sits across Fourth Street, the artistic dividing line between past and present.

Nov 2008, Photo 109