A new gift to the National Gallery of Art will help it share artworks with museums across the country. The Washington, D.C., institution will lend pieces from its collection to museums from Alaska to Kansas to Florida.
Sharing Art Across the Nation
The Mitchell P. Rales Family Foundation gave $116 million to the museum's "Across the Nation" program. This program celebrates the 250th birthday of the United States. It sends art to and supports exhibitions at smaller regional museums nationwide.
Mitchell P. Rales is a trustee of the National Gallery of Art. This gift is the largest programming donation in the museum's history.
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Start Your News DetoxRales noted that the museum has 160,000 works of art, but most stay in storage. He wanted to find a way to make the "National Gallery of Art" truly national.
The "Across the Nation" program started in 2025 with earlier funding from Rales. This money covered shipping, installation, and other costs for sending artworks to ten museums for two-year loans. So far, almost 900,000 visitors to these partner museums have seen the art.
Kaywin Feldman, director of the National Gallery of Art, explained that many Americans do not visit Washington. She wants smaller museums to feel a sense of ownership over the art. The next group of loans will go out in fall 2027.
Rales co-founded Danaher Corporation, a science and technology firm, in 1984. He has collected art since the 1990s. Some of his works are at Glenstone, an art museum in Maryland he founded with Emily Wei Rales. She is the director of Glenstone.
Glenstone opened in 2006 and expanded in 2018. It turns 20 this year. The museum is free to the public and has about 1,300 artworks on a 300-acre campus.
Valentina Nahon, senior director of public engagement at Glenstone, said their experience is known for being uncrowded and contemplative. This is different from the busy downtown setting of the National Gallery of Art. Rales spent five years as president there and has been a board member for over 20 years.
Now, museums in both remote and urban areas across the U.S. will get to show pieces from the National Gallery's collection. Feldman noted that the donation is for the entire U.S., not just the National Gallery. She called it a "patriotic gift" from Rales.
Celebrating the U.S. Birthday
The National Gallery of Art is also celebrating the country's 250th birthday in 2026. They have an exhibition called "Dear America." It explores themes of land, community, and freedom through over 100 artworks on paper.
Museums that have already received loans include the Mint Museum in North Carolina and the Figge Art Museum in Iowa. The Anchorage Museum, for example, borrowed paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe, Nancy Graves, and Mark Rothko.
Julie Decker, Director of the Anchorage Museum, said these loans connect geographies. They invite people to see Alaska alongside major American art movements. She called it an "unprecedented opportunity" for their community to see works by renowned artists in Alaska.
Big donations have always been important to the National Gallery of Art. It was founded as a gift to the American people from Andrew W. Mellon. Congress accepted his offer in 1937. Today, the museum mainly relies on federal funding.
Rales hopes this gift will help create more stability for the country’s artistic landscape. He believes someone needs to help with the defunding of the arts.
