Mon Mar 17, 2008 — by Aaron Rosenberg

On This Day: The National Gallery of Art

Home to many great works of art opens on this day in 1941

The National Gallery of Art opened in Washington, D.C. on March 17, 1941.

Financier and art collector Andrew W. Mellon established the A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust just before his death in 1937, and it was this trust that worked with Congress to establish the art museum. John Russell Pope, who later designed the Jefferson Memorial, designed the original building, and I.M. PEI designed an East Wing addition that was completed in 1978.

The gallery was centered around twenty-one masterpieces originally owned by Catherine II of Russia—Mellon purchased the collection in the early 1930s.

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