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National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, established by act of Congress, Mar. 24, 1937. Andrew W. Mellon donated funds for construction of the building as well as his own collection of 130 American portraits. The marble building was designed by John Russell Pope; it was opened in Mar., 1941. The east wing, designed by I. M. Pei, was completed in 1978. Other works in the gallery include Samuel H. Kress's collection of Italian masterpieces, the Joseph E. Widener Collection, the Chester Dale Collection, the Lessing J. Rosenwald collection of drawings and prints, the Edgar W. and Bernice C. Garbisch collection of 175 American naive paintings (given since 1953); and the Paul Mellon collection of portraits of Native Americans by George Catlin (given 1968). The gallery's paintings number more than 1,200. The collection is especially rich in Italian, French, and American works. The government turned over to the gallery the Index of American Design, consisting of about 20,000 drawings and watercolors illustrating the history of American crafts and folk art.
See H. Cairns and J. Walker, ed., A Pageant of Painting from the National Gallery of Art (2 vol., 1966); M. Wilson, The National Gallery (1984).
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