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21 unusual facts about National Gallery of Art


Bradford Gowen

He has made many duo appearances with his wife, pianist Maribeth Gowen, including a 1997 Schubert bicentennial concert at the National Gallery of Art devoted to the composer's four-hand works.

Dana Tai Soon Burgess

On August 11, 2013, Dana Tai Soon Burgess Dance Company will perform a new dance work at The National Gallery of Art as part of their Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes Exhibit, organized by the Victoria and Albert Museum of London.

David E. Finley

Finley's son, David E. Finley, Jr., a prominent cultural leader in the United States in the 20th Century, served as the first director of the National Gallery of Art and the founding chairman of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Didarganj Yakshi

The statue's nose was damaged during a travelling exhibition, The Festival of India, en route to Smithsonian Institution and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., USA.

Frederick Gutheim

The pinnacle of his career may have been the photographic exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. that he created of American architecture to celebrate 100th anniversary of the American Institute of Architects.

George Kubler

He also was honored with several visiting lectureships and honorary degrees and was appointed the 1985-86 Kress Professor at the Center for Advanced Studies at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Georgia Marble Company

The Georgia Marble Company supplied the marble used to build the New York Stock Exchange annex, the statue in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., the National Air and Space Museum, the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art, the Federal Reserve Bank in Cleveland, and the Buckingham Fountain in Chicago.

Holston Formation

Among the notable buildings where Tennessee marble is used as a building stone are two in Washington, D.C.: the National Gallery of Art, which uses stone from Knox and Blount counties, and the United States Capitol, which has stairways constructed from Hawkins County marble.

Kathan Brown

A smaller archive is owned by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Crown Point Press celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary with an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and it’s thirty-fifth with a retrospective jointly organized by and shown at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. and the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor.

Kenneth E. Tyler

In the United States, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, has a comprehensive Gemini G.E.L. collection and has also produced an online catalogue raisonné.

Lynnewood Hall

In 1940, Joseph E. Widener donated more than 2,000 sculptures, paintings, decorative art, and porcelains to the National Gallery of Art.

Marcel Roethlisberger

He married the art historian Biancamaria Bianco in 1962 and was visiting professor to many universities and held positions at various art institutions such as the Courtauld Institute, the National Gallery of Art (in D.C.), and the J. Paul Getty Museum.

Mark Stock

Stock's works can be found in the permanent collections of Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Modern Art (New York and San Francisco), The Library of Congress and The National Gallery of Art.

Philip Benedict

He has held visiting positions or fellowships at Cornell University, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, All Souls College, Oxford, the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (Paris), the Lumière University Lyon 2, Humboldt University (Berlin), and the National Gallery of Art's Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (Washington, D.C.).

Raoul Middleman

Paintings by Raoul Middleman can be found in private and corporate collections such as Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, MD; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; National Academy of Design, NY; New York Public Library, NY; and Syracuse University, NY.

Reba White Williams

In December 2008, Reba and Dave Williams donated their American print collection of more than 5,200 works and the Print Research Foundation and its facilities (the building, library, and archives) to the National Gallery of Art.

Richard E. Spear

He received many research grants, including a post-doctoral Fulbright to Italy (1966–67), and fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies (1971–72), the National Endowment for the Humanities (1980–81), the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (1983–84), the Guggenheim Foundation (1987–88), and the National Humanities Center (1992–93).

Robert Nickle

Robert Nickle's work is included in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, David and Alfred Smart Gallery, Whitney Museum of American Art, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the Indianapolis Museum, Smithsonian Museum, Carnegie Institute Museum and the National Gallery in Washington.

Virginia Avenue Tunnel

It originally served the B&P station on the present-day site of the National Gallery of Art, on the National Mall at 6th & B Street NW (today's Constitution Avenue).

Virginia Dwan

In 2013, Dwan gave A Nonsite, Pine Barrens, New Jersey (1968), an indoor work containing substances from an outdoor site elsewhere), and Glass Stratum (1967), made up of 37 sheets of half-inch-thick glass layered atop one another, to the National Gallery of Art.

William Wondriska

In 1961 Wondriska founded Wondriska Associates, a design firm which became known for its branding work with such clients as the Walt Disney Company, Children's Television Workshop, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art, and the Boston Symphony.


Charles Percy Parkhurst

He had a fellowship with Paul J. Sachs, a Byzantine expert, at Dumbarton Oaks, but never a superb linguist, Parkhurst felt that he was unqualified for this position and left to become a research assistant at the National Gallery of Art along with his fellow student Craig Hugh Smith.

Francesco Dal Co

He is currently Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies of the National Gallery of Art, scholar at the Getty Center, and Member of the Board of Directors of the Society of Architectural Historians.

Joseph E. Widener

van Rijn 107.jpg"?title=Rembrandt">Rembrandt, Widener Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

Lorain County Community College

LCCC's Division of Arts and Humanities is home to several distinguished scholars and artists, notably 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry finalist and 2006 Lannan Literary Award-winning poet and memoirist Bruce Weigl and composer Jeffrey Mumford, 2013 composer-in-residence at the National Gallery of Art.

Lorser Feitelson

Lorser Feitelson’s works are included in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the National Museum of American Art; Smithsonian Institution, Library of Congress and National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art and Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; Columbus Museum of Art; and numerous other public and private collections.

Louis-Léopold Boilly

A major exhibition of his work, The Art of Louis-Léopold Boilly: Modern Life in Napoleonic France, travelled to the United States where it was shown at both the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth and the National Gallery of Art in Washington (1995).

Neoclassical architecture

Its last manifestation was in Beaux-Arts architecture (1885–1920), and its very last, large public projects in the United States were the Lincoln Memorial (1922), the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. (1937), and the American Museum of Natural History's Roosevelt Memorial (1936).

S. Lane Faison

Several of his students went on to direct major museums including Earl A. Powell III of the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, Glenn D. Lowry of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and Thomas Krens of the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries

Originally shown at Hamilton Palace, it was sold to Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery in 1882, from whom it was bought by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation in 1954, which deposited it in Washington DC's National Gallery of Art, where it now hangs.

Wilber Moore Stilwell

This medal was created by Leonard Baskin (#42) and John Everett Benson, which was given to celebrate the National Gallery of Art's twenty-fifth anniversary and was reported by National Geographic.