Mitchell Rales Donates $116M to Endow NGA's Lending Program

The National Gallery of Art (NGA) received a $116 million donation from the Mitchell P. Rales Family Foundation, endowing its Across the Nation lending program in perpetuity. Launched as a pilot in spring 2025 with seed funding from Rales, the program has loaned works by Georgia O'Keeffe, Rembrandt, Rothko, Botticelli, and Henri Matisse to small regional museums, including the Anchorage Museum, Nevada Museum of Art, and Flint Institute of Arts. In its first year, it reached an estimated 900,000 visitors across 10 institutions. The gift is the largest in NGA's history to endow a program and commemorates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Planning began in 2023, before the Trump administration's focus on the semiquincentennial. The NGA, funded by private and public sources like the Smithsonian, shuttered its diversity programs after Trump's 2025 executive order. Rales, co-founder of Danaher Corporation ($79.1B in assets), has served on NGA's board for 20 years and founded Glenstone museum in 2006. NGA Director Kaywin Feldman said the gift makes Across the Nation a core pillar of the museum's work.