The National Gallery of Art announced Tuesday that it has received a gift of $116 million from Mitchell Rales, the 69-year-old billionaire art collector and co-founder of health care company Danaher. The contribution is the largest programming-related donation in the NGA’s history and will serve to indefinitely fund the museum’s Across the Nation program, which loans artwork to partner museums.
“It relates back to this idea of the National Gallery serving the nation more fully,” said Kaywin Feldman, director of the NGA, adding that the donation is meant to honor the 250th birthday of the United States. “It’s a patriotic gift. Mitch is a very patriotic person. It’s very important to him to give back to our country.”
Across the Nation, which started in 2025 with funding from Rales, has brought works by Georgia O’Keeffe, Mark Rothko and others from the NGA’s permanent collection to independent museums in 10 states. The lending program covers the expenses of shipping and displaying, as well as insurance for the smaller museums. With this funding, the NGA intends for the program to eventually reach art institutions in all 50 states. The next series of long-term loans will begin in fall 2027.
Rales, whose net worth is estimated to be $4 billion, is best known in the D.C. area as the founder of the private Glenstone art museum and a co-owner of the Washington Commanders.
“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.”
Rales first joined the NGA’s board of trustees in 2006, the same year that he co-founded the Potomac, Maryland, private art museum Glenstone with art historian Emily Wei, whom he married two years later. He became NGA’s president in 2019 — an unpaid, part-time position — before being succeeded by Darren Walker in 2024.
The NGA, which was started 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, relying upon private donations and organizations. But since 1937, when an act of Congress established the NGA, the museum has received funding for operations, administrative costs and upkeep. Many of the gallery’s jobs are also funded by Congress.
In the 2000s, the gallery’s federal appropriations grew steadily due to bipartisan support in Congress. Members of the U.S. DOGE Service met with NGA leadership in April 2025, raising concerns about potential cuts. But in its congressional funding request for fiscal 2025, the NGA sought just over $215 million in government funds — a slight increase from the prior year.
The DOGE meeting came after the gallery closed its diversity office, removed related language from its website and reassigned staff to comply with an executive order signed by President Donald Trump that declared diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives to be “illegal and immoral discrimination programs.”
Trump’s anti-DEI executive order ran counter to the gallery’s recent efforts to diversify its exhibitions and leadership, spurred on by the 2020 police killing of George Floyd and the resulting national reckoning around institutional racism. The gallery was also reacting to a 2020 petition that accused the NGA of exploiting and unfairly treating Black, Indigenous and other employees of color, as well as LGBTQ+ and female workers.
Rales, a graduate of Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, has donated to both Republicans and Democrats over the years, including the 2000 presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain (R) and the 2008 presidential campaign of then-Sen. Barack Obama (D). In 2019, Rales signed the Giving Pledge, promising to reallocate his wealth to causes related to education and the arts.
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