Located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, the National Gallery of Art is one of the most beloved and visited museums in the United States, with a magnificent world-class collection of paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, drawings, photographs and prints, that span the history of Western art. The museum was initially established privately in 1937, with Andrew Mellon, an American industrialist, philanthropist, art collector and politician, providing his personal collection to get things started. However, the newly constructed neoclassical West Building of the Gallery, designed by John Russell Pope, was completed in 1941, which is linked to the iconic modernist East Building, designed by I M Pei, opened to the public later, in June 1978.

With the focus on displaying modern and contemporary artworks, the East Building houses an enviable collection of works by Henri Matisse, Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso, Alexander Calder, along with many other artists. The 35 feet high Tower Galleries of the building, accessible by elevator and spiral staircases, offer the visitors to clearly observe the installation of large sculptures like the welded steel pieces, created by David Smith. The Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA), a large research centre, is also housed in the building.

Both the buildings of the National Gallery of Art are connected by the Concourse, a walkway beneath 4th street. However, in 2008, American artist Leo Villareal was commissioned to transform the Concourse into an artistic installation. Today, the Concourse is equipped with the Multiverse, the largest and most complex light sculpture with an animated light display, featuring approximately 41,000 computer-programmed LED nodes that run through channels, covering the entire 200 feet (61 m) long underground moving walkway, equipped with an eye-level waterfall, along with a food court and a gift shop.

Both the building are also attached to the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden, opened to the public on 23 May 1999, exhibiting several pieces of contemporary sculpture collection from the museum. While the classical art is housed in the West Building and features wood-panelled galleries, marble hallways, a magnificent atrium and indoor gardens, the modern art is housed in the East Building across the street, linked by an underground walkway featuring an eye-level waterfall and a moving walkway with an animated light display.

The majestic building of the National Gallery of Art stands proudly on the site of the former Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station, where James Garfield, the 20th president of the United States, was fatally shot on 2 July 1881. Later, the station was demolished in 1908, as it was incompatible with the McMillan Plan for the National Mall. Although temporary war buildings were constructed on the site in 1918, they were subsequently demolished by 1921 to make room for the construction of the George Washington Memorial Building, which was never materialised. Finally, the site was reassigned to the new National Gallery of Art. Unfortunately, neither Andrew Mellon, nor John Russell Pope, survived long enough to see the completion of the magnificent building, as both died in late August 1937, only two months after the excavation had begun.

When completed in 1941, it was the largest marble structure in the world. The construction of the East Building of the Gallery, funded by the children of Andrew Mellon, started in the 1970s on much of the remaining land left over from the original congressional action, which was completed in 1978 and was opened on 1 June of the same year by President Jimmy Carter.

The West Building is composed of the pink Tennessee marble, seven shades of which were used on the exterior, graduated from pink at the base to near-white at the cornice, while the lightest hue was reserved for the dome. The outer columns of the porticoes are made of a darker hue, while those at the centre are lighter. From the Mall, a tall and broad staircase leads to the main entrance portico of the grand building, where twelve Ionic columns are distributed in two rows, with the inner ones framing three doors. The inner circle of the building is circumscribed by sixteen 36-foot-tall green Italian marble columns that carry the limestone entablature and parapet, while double columns mark the entry into each of the arms and empty niches, carved out of the rotunda walls.

The West building, centred on a domed rotunda is modelled on the interior of the Pantheon in Rome, extending east and west from the rotunda with a pair of skylit sculpture halls providing its main circulation spine. The building contains an extensive collection of paintings and sculptures by European masters from the medieval period through the late 19th century, as well as pre-20th century works by American artists. Apart from the paintings of the great artists like Rembrandt, Jan Vermeer, Claude Monet,Paul Cezanneand Vincent van Gogh, it also houses the Portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci, the only painting created by the legendary Leonardo da Vinci in public view in the Americas.

It also has a huge collection of around 3000 sculptures of European and American artists, dating from the Renaissance to the present day. In addition to that, the National Gallery holds more than 31,000 drawings, pastels and watercolours, dating from the eleventh century to the present, including some of the finest Italian, German, and French artists in America, as well as important works of American painters Winslow Homer and Georgia O’Keeffe.

Construction of the East Building was required for the expansion of the National Gallery to provide an additional space to display modern artworks and a separate research centre, but the main challenge was to design it suitable for the trapezoid-shaped plot of land designated for its construction. To solve the problem, architect I M Pei divided the trapezoidal shape of the site into two triangles, one isosceles and the other a smaller right triangle. The central feature of the building is a high atrium designed as an open interior court and is centred on the same axis that forms the circulation spine of the West Building. The indoor garden of the atrium is roofed by a space-frame of glass pyramids, while a screen of aluminium rods reduces the sunlight so that the eyes of the visitors adjust to the galleries, where dimmer light levels protect the works of art from fading.While the great H-shaped façade of the building matches the equally severe walls of the West Building, to correspond in texture and colour to the original building, the new one was also constructed with lavender-pink marble from the same quarry in Tennessee.

Located to the west of the West Building, the Sculpture Garden is the last part of the complex, added only in 1999, after more than 30 years of planning. Designed by landscape architect Laurie Olin and centred on a fountain, it serves as an outdoor gallery in a natural setting for monumental modern sculpture. The huge sculptures exhibited in the surrounding landscaped area include, among others, Orphée by Marc Chagal, typewriter eraser by Claes Oldenburg, the spider by Louise Bourgeois, Thinker on Rock by Barry Flanagan, Four-Sided Pyramid by Sol LeWitt, Graft by Roxy Paine and An Entrance to the Paris Metropolitan by Hector Guimard.