The American Gold Coffer National Art Gallery
Posted On December 1, 2009
It is in downtown of Washington, D.C the National Art Gallery is set among the magnificent Buildings of National Mall located in Smithsonian Museum District. The Unites States Of America guards the art treasury of National Art Gallery.
The Gallery consists of huge collected works of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, medals, and decorative arts which reflects the progress of Western Art from the middle Ages to the present.
Well it was great traveling to National Mall which is actually open area park. As I love traveling by bus I had took a metro bus from Fourth street but at the same time bus are also available from Fifth street and Pennsylvania Avenue. And those who are much comfortable with Metro rail can also reach to National art gallery from Judiciary Square ( Red Line). Usually the museum is opened by 10.00 a.m to 05.00 p.m from Monday to Saturdays but on Sundays it is opened from 11.00 a.m to 06.00 p.m and just to alert you guys please don’t plan your trip to this wonderful place on 25th December and 1st January.
This amazing architect was open to the public free of charge from the time the museum was established in 1937. This museum was founded for the mass of the United States of America by a mutual declaration of the United States Congress. They came up with resources for structure and a extensive art collection gifted by Andrew W. Mellon.
In the classic American folklore, the collected works was formerly in private hands. It struck to the moneyman Pittsburg, Andrew. W. Mellon that Unites States did not have a single Art Museum which urged them to invest their fate in splendid art work. Thus in 1936 he gave all his collection to President Franklin D. Roosevelt but on the term that he fork over them over to the mass of America which, resulted in the construction of magnificent building which would be appropriate to house all this art work.
Architect John Russell Pope designed the new structure which was finished and accepted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on account of the American citizens on March 17, 1941. But unfortunately neither Mellon nor Pope survived to experience the museum. It was inauspicious destiny that both passed away in August 1937, within a span of twenty-four hours. They died just 60 days after the excavation started. At the moment of its foundation it was the biggest marble construction in the world. The museum pedestals on the previous location of the Sixth Street railway station which is most famous as, it is where 20th president James Garfield was shot in 1881 by a Charles J. Guiteau who failed to secure the federal post.
The museum comprises of two buildings, the West Building which was built in 1941 and the East Building in 1978 these both are linked by a large belowground channel. The West Building which was projected by architect John Russell Pope in 1937 was framed of pink Tennessee marble. It is constructed in neoclassical style, with a enormous amphistylar porch and a huge hemispherical roof, are remindful of the Pantheon in Rome. The balanced east and west wings are bonded to the central exhibition area. It reflects amazing representation of classicism.
The West Building has an wide-ranging collection of paintings and sculptures by European artists from the Knightly era throughout the late 19th century and also includes works by American artists from pre-20th century. The paintings by 
Jan Vermeer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh, and Leonardo Da Vinci are the main attraction of the west building.
In contrast to the west building’s classicism the contrive of the East Building by architect I.M. Pei is stridently geometrical, disunited and from above view, the East Building comes out as if made of interlacing prisms.
It was 1970’s when the Museum’s East Building was built on much of the left behind land from the true congress mutual declaration. Paul Mellon and Ailsa Mellon Bruce the offspring of Mellon’s financed the building. President Jimmy Carter opened the fashionable building on 1st June 1978 whose construction was finished in the same year by the famous architect I. M. Pei. The innovative structure was ramped up to abide the Museum’s assortment of modern paintings, drawings, sculptures, and prints.
The design received a National Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects in 1981.
The concluding accumulation to the building complex is the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden which was finished and opened to the populace on May 23, 1999. The museum hold many of contemporary sculptures.
The National Gallery of Art has the most excellent art collections in the world. The everlasting assortment of paintings spans from the Dark Ages to the present day.
The most substantial collection is the Italian Renaissance collection, which comprises of two panels from Duccio’s Maesta, the great tondo of the Adoration of the Magi by Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi, a Botticelli on the same subject, Giorgione’s Allendale Nativity, Bellini’s The Feast of the Gods, the only Leonardo painting in the Americas, and significant groups of works by Titian and Raphael.
Nevertheless, the European collections consist of exemplar of the efforts of many great masters of western painting, counting Grünewald, Cranach the Elder, Van der Weyden, Durer, Hals, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Goya, Ingres, and Delacroix, among others. The collection of sculpture and decorative arts is confessedly not pretty as prosperous as this, but comprises art works as the Chalice of Abbot Suger of St-Denis and a superb collection of work by Rodin and Degas.
And this info will give you tremendous happiness that entry to this museum is absolutely free of charge. There are also special exhibitions and can also plan a tour to this museum. Hope you enjoy this excursion.
