Historic $116M Gift Endows Lending Program at National Gallery of Art
The initiative reached an estimated 900,000 visitors across 10 institutions in the United States during its pilot year.
Following a $116 million donation from the foundation of biotech billionaire and Glenstone museum co-founder Mitchell Rales, the National Gallery of Art (NGA) will continue an artwork lending program that has brought its collection to small regional museums across the country in perpetuity.
Launched as a pilot program last spring with seed funding also from Rales, Across the Nation has so far brought works by Georgia O'Keeffe to Anchorage, Rembrandt to Denver, Rothko to Boise, Bottoceli to Flint, and Henri Matisse to northern Washington. The initiative, which also covers expenses associated with transport and installation, reached an estimated 900,000 visitors in its first year across the 10 institutions that displayed loaned works.
The Rales donation is the museum's largest-ever gift to endow a program.
The Mitchell P. Rales Family Foundation endowed the program to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Planning for the initiative began in 2023, long before the Trump administration fixated on the nation's semiquincentennial to promote a cultural agenda of “American exceptionalism.”
The NGA is funded through a mix of private and public funding, similar to the Smithsonian's financial structure. Both institutions fell under the administration's 2025 mandate to eliminate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the federal government. Following Trump's inauguration, the NGA shuttered its diversity programs in compliance with federal orders.
When NGA launched Across the Nation last April, the institution said the program would create “unprecedented access” to masterworks. Among the first institutions to hang paintings, photography, and installations from the NGA's collection were the Anchorage Museum, the Nevada Museum of Art, and the Flint Institute of Arts.
"Endowments are the superpower of nonprofits, enabling institutions to fulfill their missions," Rales said in a press release. "I have long admired the National Gallery’s commitment to national service and sharing artistic excellence with all people."
In 1969, Rales and his brother Steven founded Danaher Corporation, a biotechnology company that manufactures diagnostic instruments. Last year, the company reported $79.1 billion in assets. Rales has served on the NGA's board of trustees for the past 20 years and, through his foundation, established the free, private modern art museum Glenstone in Potomac, Maryland, in 2006.
"Through his 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 fulfill a central part of our vision — of the nation and for all the people," National Gallery of Art Director Kaywin Feldman said in a statement.
