The National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington, DC, has received a landmark $116m donation from the Mitchell P. Rales Family Foundation to endow its Across the Nation lending programme in perpetuity. The donation from the longtime NGA trustee’s foundation is the largest gift to endow programming in the institution’s history.
The initiative launched in spring 2025 and since then works loaned from the NGA’s collection have been seen by around 900,000 visitors at ten partner institutions—from the Anchorage Museum in Alaska to the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina. Through the programme, partner museums can select works from the museum’s permanent collection for long-term loans at no cost, with the NGA covering all associated expenses, including transport, installation, insurance and regional marketing campaigns. The next cycle will launch in autumn 2027 and run until 2029, with new partner institutions to be announced.
“Through [Rales’s] remarkable partnership and thanks to this landmark gift, the National Gallery is able to establish Across the Nation as a core pillar of our work and fulfil a central part of our vision—of the nation and for all the people,” Kaywin Feldman, the museum's director, said in a statement. “We will not only be able to introduce beloved works of art from our collection to new audiences for generations to come, but will also establish a dynamic model for collection-sharing and build a collaborative network with our museum colleagues nationwide.”
Maria Coltharp, the acting executive director of the Whatcom Museum, one of the first museums to participate in Across the Nation, with the National Gallery of Art’s chief of conservation, Lena Stringari, observing Black and White Composition (around 1955) by Wendell Brazeau Photo by Adrienne Dawson, courtesy of the Whatcom Museum.
Rales, who co-founded the healthcare and diagnostics company Danaher Corporation with his brother Steven, has served on the NGA's board of trustees for 20 years and was its president from 2019 to 2024. He is also the co-founder of Glenstone, the free private museum of modern and contemporary art in Potomac, Maryland, with his wife Emily Wei Rales.
“I am thrilled and humbled to support a programme that will deepen access to the nation’s collection for Americans throughout the country in perpetuity, and to honour this remarkable moment in our country’s history—our 250th anniversary,” Rales said in a statement.
The donation comes at an important time for US art institutions, which face financial pressure from lower post-pandemic visitor numbers, shifting donor habits and cuts to public funding under the Trump administration. The NGA, which receives nearly 80% of its operating budget from the federal government, closed its diversity office after an executive order president Donald Trump signed on the first day of his second term.