Museum
National Gallery of Art
Neoclassical marble museum built by Depression-era workers, home to a world-class art collection.
0:00≈ 2 min
Location
0:00≈ 2 min
About this audio guide
This guide to the National Gallery of Art opens with a puzzle: both the banker who dreamed up the building and the architect who designed it died before a single column went up. You'll hear about the tradesmen hired in the depths of the Great Depression who actually built it, including a metal lather named Eastman who strung wire lath across the Rotunda dome, and about the crews grading blocks of Tennessee marble by shade as the building climbed. Look up into the dome and consider whose names never made it onto the building at all.
This audio guide was created using AI.