National Gallery of Art, West Building, Constitution Avenue Façade National Gallery of Art, West Building, National Mall Entrance		The National Gallery of Art opened in 1941. By the 1960s, it needed more space for its growing collections. The original building, designed by architect John Russell Pope in the 1930s, was built on a spacious rectangular tract of land along the National Mall in Washington D.C. Look carefully at the geometry—the lines, shapes, and forms—that Pope used for the original Gallery

This original building is now called the West Building; it contains mostly European and American paintings, drawings and sculpture from the 13th through the 19th centuries, including masterpieces such as:

Leonardo da Vinci, Ginevra de' Benci, c. 1474

John Singleton Copley, Watson and the Shark, 1778

Jacques-Louis David, The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries, 1812

Edgar Degas, Little Dancer Aged Fourteen - plaster statuette, model 1879-1881, cast c. 1922

Now, look at the East Building of the National Gallery, designed in the 1970s
by architect I. M. Pei.

National Gallery of Art, East Building, Fourth Street Façade

National Gallery of Art, East Building, Southwest Façade

This building houses 20th-century masterpieces such as:

Wassily Kandinsky, Improvisation 31 (Sea Battle), 1913

Pablo Picasso, Family of Saltimbanques, 1905

Henri Matisse, Beasts of the Sea, 1950

Jackson Pollock, Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist), 1950

How are the two buildings different in design? Do you see a difference in the approach of the two architects? Do you think the types of art housed in each building influenced its design?