The National Gallery of Art received a record-breaking $116 million gift in honor of America’s 250th birthday, serving as an indefinite fund for the museum’s Across the Nation program, which lends artwork to partner museums.
Contributed by Mitchell Rales, the 69-year-old billionaire art collector and co-founder of healthcare company Danaher, it is the largest programming-related donation in the NGA’s history.
“It relates back to this idea of the National Gallery serving the nation more fully,” said Kaywin Feldman, director of the NGA. “It’s a patriotic gift. Mitch is a very patriotic person. It’s very important to him to give back to our country.”
Rales, whose estimated net worth is $4 billion, is best known in the Washington, D.C., area as the founder of the private Glenstone art museum and a co-owner of the Washington Commanders.
The Washington-based museum launched its Across the Nation program in spring 2025, lending NGA’s exhibits to smaller museums while covering the lending costs of shipping and displaying. The program’s pilot has reached 900,000 people nationwide since its launch, and the new cycle will begin in 2027 and run through 2029.
“The defunding that’s going on for the arts as a whole—somebody’s got to pick up the slack,” Rales told the New York Times, noting the gift is intended to enhance the sustainability of the country’s artistic landscape.
Funding for the program initially came from Rales, which has brought works by Georgia O’Keeffe, Mark Rothko, and others from the NGA’s permanent collection to independent museums in 10 states.
“We have an incredible asset base in the form of 160,000 works of art, most of which end up in storage for long periods of time, because you just can’t show it all,” Rales said. “And so I started to say, ‘What do we need to do to put the word “national” into the National Gallery of Art?’”
Museums that have already received loans include the Mint Museum in North Carolina and the Figge Art Museum in Iowa. The Anchorage Museum, for example, borrowed paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe, Nancy Graves, and Mark Rothko.
“In its inaugural year, Across the Nation has already demonstrated the impact it can have at regional museums and in communities nationwide,” Rales said in a statement provided by NGA. “I have long admired the National Gallery’s commitment to national service and sharing artistic excellence with all people.”
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Rales joined the NGA’s board of trustees in 2006, the same year that he co-founded the Potomac, Maryland, private art museum Glenstone. He became NGA’s president in 2019 — an unpaid, part-time position — before being succeeded by Darren Walker in 2024.
The NGA, established with funding and art donated by Andrew W. Mellon, operates as a private-public partnership similar to the Smithsonian Institution. The gallery doesn’t use government appropriations to acquire art, thus relying upon private donations and organizations.
The museum has received funding for operations, administrative costs, and upkeep since 1937, when an act of Congress established the NGA. Many of the gallery’s jobs are also funded by Congress.