Deepening public understanding is at the core of the National Gallery’s exhibitions, educational programs, and outreach efforts. We are here to preserve and share art, encourage curiosity and continuous learning, and invite visitors to see the world through new lenses and appreciate the perspectives that others bring. We recognize the museum’s potential to be a source of unity, a place where empathy and understanding can flourish. Together, we will continue to create spaces and experiences that bring people together, inspiring a sense of wonder and encouraging dialogues that transcend time and place.  

Kaywin Feldman

Director 

Each work of art that enters the National Gallery’s permanent collection represents an inspirational story of private generosity. Like the gifts of art given in the second third of the twentieth century to form the nucleus of the nation’s collection, all acquisitions since have been made possible by individuals who donate art or funds to purchase works of art for the nation.  

This fiscal year, the National Gallery added 2,027 works to the nation’s art collection, including Anne Vallayer-Coster’s Still Life with Flowers in an Alabaster Vase and Fruit (1783); Karin Bergöö Larsson’s Pierre Louis Alexandre (1879–1880); 166 19th- and 20th-century photographs from the UBS Art Collection—the largest gift from UBS to a museum to date; Remedios Varo’s Banqueros en acción (Bankers in Action) (1962); Sam Gilliam’s Yellow Edge (1972); Belkis Ayón’s Sin titulo [Mujer en posición fetal] (Untitled, Woman in fetal position) (1996); Todd Gray’s Atlantic (Double Dutch) (2022); and 20 box constructions and 7 collages by Joseph Cornell, a transformative gift of mid-twentieth-century works that makes the National Gallery one of the world’s leading repositories of the artist’s work. 

This year, we presented a wide range of exhibitions, from complex loan shows such as Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment and Dorothea Lange: Seeing People, to installations drawn from the National Gallery’s collection, such as Conversations: Kerry James Marshall and John Singleton Copley.  

Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction explored how abstract art and woven textiles became intertwined over the past hundred years. In the 20th century, textiles were often considered lesser—as applied art, women’s work, or domestic craft. Woven Histories challenged the hierarchies that often separate textiles from fine arts.  

Gordon Parks: Camera Portraits from the Corcoran Collection looked at how this celebrated American photographer forged a new mode of portraiture after World War II. By blending a documentary photographer’s desire to depict his subjects where they lived and worked with a studio and fashion photographer’s attention to dress, character, and expression, Parks was able, as he wrote in 1948, to show the “significance” of individuals “in relation to the era [they] represent.”

Foregrounding Haiti’s significance as the world’s first free Black republic, Spirit & Strength: Modern Art from Haiti presented some of the most prominent artists to have lived or worked there over the past century. The landmark exhibition featured 21 works by modern and contemporary Haitian artists given to the National Gallery of Art by Kay and Roderick Heller and Beverly and John Fox Sullivan.

Honoring the 150th anniversary of the first impressionist exhibition, Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment brought together some 125 paintings, works on paper, prints, sculptures, and photographs to explore the various ways that artists responded to a city recovering from the violence of war and enormous political and social upheaval.

A full list of exhibitions presented this fiscal year is available under the Exhibitions and Loans section of this report.  

We welcomed 3.83 million visitors to our 25-acre campus located on the National Mall in calendar year 2023. This represents an 18 percent increase over the previous year’s attendance of 3.26 million. Our online and social media audiences both grew by 13 percent in 2023. April and July were the busiest months of the year, bringing more than 400,000 visitors each. Visitation on Thanksgiving Day was the highest in the last 10 years, and April 8 set the record for daily attendance in 2023, with 30,193 visitors. In calendar year 2024, we welcomed 3.94 million visitors. 

In 1994, two interns working at the National Gallery of Art had a question: Why were students coming from all over the country, and even the world, for tours, but almost none from our very own city of Washington, DC? Art Around the Corner (AAC) was created as an answer. While the program has grown and evolved over the last 30 years, its goal remains the same: to connect students from DC Public Schools (DCPS) with the National Gallery and its resources. As of this year, we have worked with more than 15,000 students from over 40 schools, exploring over 300 works of art together.

AAC takes a whole-school approach to learning, offering programs for students and teachers, as well as parents and families. We work with administrators to set priorities and cocreate curricula with teachers to best meet their needs. We use our National Gallery collection and resources to connect to what the students are engaged with in school and consider how their parents and families are part of the learning community as well. We also provide district-wide support for arts teachers, partnering with the DCPS Central Office Arts Team. Together, we host district-wide professional development workshops and create resources with arts teachers, including videos, lesson plans, and materials.

Popularly known for roles in The West Wing and Nurse Jackie, Anna Deavere Smith presented a four-part lecture series, Chasing That Which Is Not Me / Chasing That Which Is Me, in the National Gallery’s East Building Auditorium. Delivered with segments of performance, her lectures examined the material she has collected as part of her project “On the Road: A Search for American Character,” through which she has been interviewing Americans since 1980. Conceived as a sequel to her 2015 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, titled “That Which Is Not Me,” Smith’s lectures continued to explore performance as a way of knowing.

Inaugurated in 1949, the Mellon Lectures is the longest-running lecture series at the National Gallery of Art. The series was founded to present the best contemporary thought and scholarship in the fine arts.