NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART
6th and Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20565 www.nga.gov

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Organizations Filed Purposes: The mission of the National Gallery of Art is to serve the United States of America in a national role by preserving, collecting, exhibiting, and fostering the understanding of works of art, at the highest possible museum and scholarly standards.

The Gallery's mission is to preserve, collect, exhibit and foster understanding of works of art

COLLECTIONSThe National Gallery of Art's collection is at the heart of the Gallery's mission, following founder Andrew W. Mellon's gift and mandate to establish a national gallery with works of the highest quality. The collection of paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts traces the development of European achievements from the 13th century to the present and American art from colonial times to the present. It comprises a comprehensive study of Italian Renaissance art, including the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci outside Europe, as well as strong holdings of the French Impressionists, the Dutch and Flemish masters, one of the country's most distinguished American collections, and twentieth-century art. The collection also includes prints, drawings, rare books and photographs. Major post-World War II sculpture is installed in a dynamic and richly landscaped setting in the National Gallery Sculpture Garden. The Gallery's collections were strengthened during the fiscal year with a number of significant acquisitions made possible by generous donors. The British paintings collection was enhanced with the addition of Sir Edwin Landseer's "Alpine Mastiffs Reanimating a Distressed Traveler" (1820). Dutch and Flemish collection acquisitions included Philips Wouwerman's "The Departure for the Hunt" (1665/1668) and Jan Jansz van de Velde III's "Still Life with a Stoneware Jug and Pipe" (1650). Additions to the French paintings collection included Henri Lehmann's "Woman of the Orient" (1837) and Theo van Rysselberghe's "Denise Marechal" (1894). The Gallery's department of modern and contemporary art acquired Jackson Pollock's "Ritual" (1953), Georgia O'Keeffe's "Black White and Blue" (1930) and Simon Hantai's "Meun" (1968). The Gallery's collection of old master drawings was augmented with many important acquisitions during the year. Antonio Campi's "Virgin and Child with a Male Saint and Mary Magdalene" (1546/1547) joined the collection of sixteenth-century Italian drawings. "The Siege of Tortona" (1886) by Andrea Gastaldi was added to the Gallery's collection of nineteenth-century Italian works on paper. Approximately one hundred works were added to the collection of old master prints, including a proof from Francisco de Goya's "Disasters of War", created in response to the Napoleonic occupation of Spain (1808-1814) during the Peninsular War. Another outstanding print, Edgar Degas's "Apres le Bain II", is one of two uniquely inked impressions of the first state of the lithograph of 1891-1892. Additions to the Gallery's sculpture collection included three donated works: "Modular Wall Structure" (1968), a large white gridded aluminum relief by Sol Lewitt; "Issue", conceived 1966, a physical-conceptual work by William Anastasi; and Fred Sandback's "Untitled (Flat Wall Piece)" (1970), a subtle rectangular hanging of copper wire. The collection was further augmented with Keith Sonnier's sculptural installation "Go Between" (1968). The Gallery's photograph collection was enhanced with a generous donation of 724 photographs, including 140 photographs by such distinguished photographers as Robert Adams, Robert Heinecken, Sally Mann, Irving Penn, Alex Soth, and Edward Weston. Another important addition to the collection during the year was "Gardner's Photographic Sketchbook of the War" (1866), two bound albums of 100 albumen prints widely celebrated as one of the most notable publications of the Civil War. Major twentieth- and twenty-first century additions included twenty-three photographs by the Harlem Renaissance photographer James Van Der Zee, made between 1915 and the 1950s. Eight photographs by Gordon Parks included four of his pictures of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first unit of black pilots to serve in the Army's Air Corps. The Gallery's library acquired ninety titles for the rare book collection during the year, including a copy of the Roman Breviary dated June 14, 1515 and an eighteenth-century drawing manual by Jusepe de Ribera entitled "Cartilla parp aprender a dibuxar" (Madrid, 1774), the first known technical manual by a Spanish painter. An album of photographs including images of John Singer Sargent's 1888 portrait of his great-great-grandmother was added to the Gallery's image collection.Preserving the Gallery's outstanding collection for future generations remains one of the Gallery's critical responsibilities and the primary concern of its conservators and scientific researchers. During the fiscal year, the Gallery's painting, object, photograph, paper, and frame conservators and scientific researchers undertook treatments and examinations and studied and devised new technologies that further the Gallery's mission of preserving the works of art with which it is entrusted. The Gallery's conservators performed seventy-three major treatments, 802 minor treatments, fifty-one major examinations, 3,995 minor examinations, and 3,875 condition examinations for exhibitions. The matting and framing staff prepared 517 new mats, framed 778 works of art, constructed fifty display mounts and 197 storage enclosures, and assisted in seventy-two special installations. Conservation scientists examined more than fifty works of art in all media. Several major treatments of works in the Gallery's permanent collection involved rewarding collaborations within the conservation division. Conservators from the painting, textiles, paper, and preventive departments worked together on the complex treatment and frame support for the installation and display of Edouard Vuillard's "Place Vintimille" in the French galleries. Conservators from the objects and textiles departments collaborated to treat H. C. Westermann's sculpture "The Plush", cleaning and stabilizing the sculpture for the retrospective "H. C. Westermann Goin' Home". Paper and paintings conservators conferred on the appropriate long-term care and treatment of two newly acquired hunting trophies by Antoine Berjon, both executed in pastel on canvas prepared with thick gesso ground. Many outgoing works of art on loan required treatments, custom mounts, frames, and specialized display environments during the fiscal year. Conservators constructed fifteen waterproof and microclimate packages for safe travel and display, and conservators and scientists contributed significantly to the Gallery's exhibition program, assisting with the planning and implementation of the special exhibitions and gallery rotations.In addition to providing expert care for works of art, Gallery conservators and scientists participate in professional meetings and conferences, and publish technical papers that make available the results of research undertaken at the Gallery. This research supports and enhances conservation practices around the world.

EDUCATION, GALLERY SHOPS AND PUBLIC PROGRAMSThe Gallery welcomed more than four million visitors to the Gallery during fiscal year 2019 and continued outreach and engagement across social media networks, serving an audience of more than 1.5 million users on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube . The Gallery's education division continued its traditional programming while adding several new initiatives, further expanding the Gallery's reach to new and more diverse audiences. Almost 530,000 visitors were served through the Gallery's educational programs and publications. Outreach efforts, including Gallery films on public television, allowed the Gallery to reach another thirty-four million viewers around the world. The Gallery launched a new mobile application during the fiscal year to help visitors navigate the Gallery and its collection. The application uses an interactive map which pinpoints user locations and provides information about the works of art that the visitors are viewing. With more than 130 audio stops, some one thousand object descriptions from the Gallery's curatorial team, and a listing of must-see works, the application allows visitors to become their own guides.The education division published its first massive open online course (MOOC) entitled Teaching Critical Thinking Through Art. This course includes demonstration videos and interactive tools and has an enrollment of more than 8,500 people from 146 countries. Another online publication, Uncovering America, has reached 22,000 unique visitors. These courses have provided meaningful experiences with the Gallery's collection to a wide audience. The Gallery has continued its popular NGA Nights program, formerly known as Evenings at the Edge. Designed to attract young professionals, the events are held six times a year and include music, performers, talks in gallery spaces, and art-making, which has proven to be an engaging and meaningful activity for Gallery visitors. The new Drop-in Art Making, an event held a number of weekends throughout the year, together with the art-making portions of NGA Nights and Community Weekends and last year's Big Draw program served more than 40,000 visitors. Another initiative, Teaching Artists' Showcase, was incorporated into NGA Nights and showcased discussions with local contemporary artists. Community Weekends programs also continued to bring in many local and first-time visitors to the Gallery. Several of the Gallery's traditional programs and related materials were adapted for Spanish-speaking audiences, including the mainstay Art Around the Corner, Storytime, and several NGA Nights pop-up talks. Storytime is the Gallery's first bilingual children's program and is held on the first Friday of each month. Audio highlights tours are translated into six languages, including American Sign Language. A new school tour entitled Perspective-Taking Through Art was offered during the fiscal year, the purpose of which was to foster empathy. In an effort to reach the local teen community, the Gallery joined forces with the Marion Barry Summer Youth Employment Program and brought three amazing young women to the Gallery for six weeks. This program will continue next fiscal year. Further enriching the pool of potential museum staff, the internship and fellowship program brought twenty-six paid interns and two postdoctoral fellows to the Gallery from thirteen states and six foreign countries. The Gallery's music department organized and presented more than seventy-five concerts during the year, including the weekly Sunday afternoon concerts, the Jazz in the Garden series, and several midweek concerts. More than 20,000 visitors attended the Gallery's indoor concerts, with an estimated 10,000 visitors attending the weekly Jazz concerts celebrating diversity and cultural awareness in the Gallery's Sculpture Garden. The Gallery's film department organized twenty-one retrospectives throughout the year that included rare treasures and new restorations from major international film archives. Fourteen films were added to the Gallery's archive of documentary films on art. The Gallery's imaging and visual services department continued to document the Gallery's collection, creating master images for 1,810 objects, including 1,173 new acquisitions and 437 sculptures. The department provided technical imaging for sixty-two conservation treatments, fulfilled ninety-two photography requests for events, and added 517 new open-access images to NGA Images. In addition, 5,423 images were added to the Gallery's website, which was engaged by 5.6 million viewers during the year. The media production department continued to provide creative, engaging media content both live in the Gallery and across the digital landscape. The department supported more than 500 live events and streamed more than thirty of the events to thousands of viewers. Audio programs garnered more than 622,000 online plays and videos received 630,000 views. The Gallery's library added 5,580 books and 646 auction catalogs to its holdings during the year. The reader services department answered 3,097 inquiries, welcomed 1,100 new readers among 2,143 visitors, created 33,107 scans from its collections, and recorded 25,965 unique visits to the library's web pages. The department loaned 1,407 titles to universities and public libraries in forty-six states and fifteen countries. The library's first public Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon was hosted during the fiscal year, featuring African American artists represented in the Evans-Tibbs Collection. The Gallery's study rooms for American prints and drawings in the West Building and for European works of art on paper in the East Building hosted 574 and 1,150 visitors respectively.The department of image collections added 77,082 photographic images, including 8,125 photographs, 35,355 rare photographs of which 1,560 are in thirty-five rare albums, 1,821 images in various formats, and more than 30,000 digital files, bringing the approximate total number of images held to sixteen million. The department's image specialists answered 956 reference inquiries and created 1,518 digital scans. The Gallery's publishing office launched two new NGA Online Editions during the year: "Italian Paintings of the Sixteenth Century and the "Alfred Stieglitz Key Set", which became the first edition devoted to works from the Gallery's photography collection. Five book-length publications were produced, including three exhibition catalogs, and brochures were produced for one exhibition and three library installations. The Gallery's Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, founded in 1979, continued its support and enhancement of scholarship in art and architecture through fellowships, research, scholarly meetings, and publications. Now in its thirty-ninth academic year, the Center welcomed scholars from China, Georgia, Italy, Nigeria, Russia the United Kingdom, and the United States. Their topics ranged from forgery and counterforgery in early modern Chinese art to the fifteenth-century painter Pisanello, and from representations of Napoleon Bonaparte to nineteenth-century Dakota art.

SPECIAL EXHIBITIONSAn integral aspect of the Gallery's programming is organizing and presenting special exhibitions of major works of art lent from public and private collections around the world, highlighting the breadth of artistic achievement in all forms. Through collaborative relationships with other nations and museums, special exhibitions bring together great works of art and contribute to scholarship in the field. The Gallery presented eighteen exhibitions during the fiscal year and administered the loan of 365 works of art to 166 sites in the United States during fiscal year 2019. Six exhibitions continuing from the previous fiscal year were Jackson Pollock's "Mural", "Water, Wind, and Waves: Marine Paintings from the Dutch Golden Age", "Sense of Humor: Caricature, Satire, and the Comical in Prints and Drawings from Leonardo to the Present", "Corot: Women", "Dawoud Bey: The Birmingham Project", and "Rachel Whiteread". The following exhibitions opened during the Gallery's fiscal year 2019."The Chiaroscuro Woodcut in Renaissance Italy" was the first exhibition devoted to the art form of making color prints from the successive printing of multiple blocks. These color prints flourished in sixteenth-century Italy. The exhibition interpreted designs from leading masters such as Raphael, Parmigianino, and Titan. "Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work 1940-1950" brought together for the first time 150 photographs and ephemera from the formative decade of Gordon Parks' sixty-year career. Parks grew from a self-taught photographer making portraits and documenting everyday life in Saint Paul and Chicago to a visionary professional shooting for "Ebony", "Vogue", "Fortune and "Life". A fully illustrated catalog accompanied the exhibition. To celebrate the 500th anniversary of the birth of Jacopo Tintoretto (1518/1519-1594), the Gallery organized three exhibitions, "Venetian Prints in the Time of Tintoretto", "Drawing in Tintoretto's Venice", and "Tintoretto: Artist of Renaissance Venice". The exhibitions focused on Tintoretto's drawings, prints, and paintings spanning the artist's entire career, as well as prints by sixteenth-century artists who influenced Tintoretto or responded to the dynamism and expressiveness of his style. The Gallery produced a half-hour film featuring original footage of his paintings in the churches and palaces of Venice and published a fully illustrated catalog to accompany the exhibitions. "The American Pre-Raphaelites: Radical Realists" celebrated the 200th anniversary of the birth of John Ruskin (1819-1900), the most influential art critic of the Victorian era. The exhibition featured over ninety paintings, watercolors, and drawings by American artists who were profoundly influenced by Ruskin's call for a revolutionary change in the practice of art. Ruskin's rejection of traditional academic art and his plea for works that reflected a deep reverence for both the spiritual and scientific qualities of the natural world found a sympathetic audience in America among a group of like-minded artists, architects, scientists, critics, and collectors. A fully illustrated catalog accompanied the exhibition."Oliver Lee Jackson: Recent Paintings" displayed eighteen paintings by the American painter, printmaker and sculptor, many of which were shown publicly for the first time. Jackson's work weaved together visual influences ranging from the Renaissance to modernism with principles of rhythm and improvisation drawn from his study of African cultures and American jazz. A film and brochure accompanied the exhibition. "The Life of Animals in Japanese Art" explored the role of animals - real or imaginary, religious or secular - in Japanese art and culture. The exhibition featured some 300 works drawn from Japanese and American public and private collections, including sculpture, paintings, lacquerwork, ceramics, metalwork, textiles, and woodblock prints that spanned the fifth century to the present. Related programs included audio tours for children; a series of Japanese films featuring animals; a symposium with talks by specialists in Japanese art, literature, history, and religion; and a special web feature on the symbolism of animals in Japanese folklore. A fully illustrated catalog accompanied the exhibition.The Gallery presented two photography exhibitions during the fiscal year. "By the Light of the Silvery Moon: A Century of Lunar Photographs" celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. The exhibition featured some fifty photographs from the nineteenth century to the space-age 1960s that played a significant role in preparing for the mission and transformed the way we envision and comprehend the cosmos. A film from NASA's archival footage featured highlights from the July 1969 Apollo mission. The second photography exhibition, "The Eye of the Sun: Nineteenth-Century Photographs from the National Gallery of Art", marked the 180th anniversary of photography's introduction to the world in 1839. Roughly 140 photographs offered an in-depth look at the development of the medium throughout its first fifty years. "Verrocchio: Sculptor and Painter of Renaissance Florence" was the first monographic exhibition in the United States on the artist, painter, sculptor, and teacher, whose students included Leonardo da Vinci, Pietro Perugino, and likely Sandro Botticelli. This exhibition brought together some fifty of his masterpieces in painting, sculpture, and drawing, allowing viewers to appreciate how his work in each art form stimulated creativity in the others. A film featured in the exhibition explored the career of this exceptionally versatile artist, and a fully illustrated catalog accompanied the exhibition. "The Touch of Color: Pastels at the National Gallery of Art" featured sixty-four exquisite drawings from the Gallery's permanent collection. The exhibition traced the history of pastel from the Renaissance to the twenty-first century and examined the many techniques that artists have developed to work with this colorful medium. Due to the fragility of the medium these works are rarely on view. An illustrated brochure accompanied the exhibition.

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