THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART REOPENS ITS AMERICAN GALLERIES
Washington DC- The National Gallery of Art is reopening its American galleries, which display some 150 paintings by virtually every important figure in American painting from the 18th to the early 20th century and will include many of these artists’ greatest masterpieces. Ten of the American galleries, among them the room featuring Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ monumental plaster model of his Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth Regiment, are on public view in time for the nearby focus exhibition, Designing the Lincoln Memorial: Daniel Chester French and Henry Bacon, which opened on February 12, 2009, to celebrate the 200th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. By late February, all fourteen American galleries will be open . During a two-year period of ongoing repair, restoration, and renovation, works normally on view in these galleries were either in storage, on loan, or featured in a special installation?Crosscurrents: American and European Masterpieces from the Permanent Collection?in the West Building Ground Floor galleries.
