The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, has contributed more than 37,000 images from its exceptional permanent collection to the Artstor Digital Library.

The selection in Artstor presents a comprehensive view of the collection, notable for its western paintings, with highlights from the time of Duccio in the fourteenth century and all European and American schools up through modernism and contemporary art, from Georgia O’Keeffe to Gerhard Richter. The graphic arts, an additional strength of the collection, are represented by woodcuts of the fifteenth century by Albrecht Dürer, etchings by Rembrandt, drawings by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, and the work of Janet Fish, among countless others. In photography, the scope of the collection is offered — from the pioneering efforts of Henry Fox Talbot in the 1840s through today with the work of Carrie Mae Weems and Myra Greene. The sculpture collection, which encompasses the medium from ancient Rome through Louise Bourgeois, and includes numismatics, is also well represented.

The National Gallery of Art was founded in 1937 by Andrew W. Mellon (1855–1937) with the gift of his extraordinary personal collection of paintings and sculptures. The construction of the classicizing West Building on the National Mall, funded by Mellon and designed by John Russell Pope, was completed in 1940 and the Gallery dedicated in 1941. Other significant early donors included Samuel H. Kress (Italian paintings and sculptures), P.A.B. and his son Joseph Widener (old master paintings), Lessing J. Rowsenwald (works on paper), and Chester Dale (nineteenth and twentieth century paintings). The founder’s children Ailsa Mellon Bruce and Paul Mellon extended their father’s legacy as lifelong benefactors of the Gallery, with gifts of art and funding, most notably for the East Building, designed by I.M. Pei, and dedicated in 1978.The Sculpture Garden designed by Laurie D. Olin opened in 1999 with support from the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation.

In 2014, The National Gallery of Art assumed stewardship of more than 8,000 works from the the Corcoran Gallery of Art when that museum closed; approximately 800 of these works are represented in the collection in Artstor.