Katharina Fritsch's "Hahn/Cock," a 15-foot electric blue rooster, looks out over Constitution Avenue from the new roof terrace at the National Gallery’s renovated East Building. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
A top-floor gallery was built into one of I.M. Pei’s tower spaces, making room for a large display of works by Alexander Calder. Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
A collection of Mark Rothko works is located atop tower one. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
A stunning room devoted entirely to Modigliani is located on the ground level. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
New stairways connect the building and are easier to navigate. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
A trio of David Smith sculptures — Circle I, Circle III and Circle II — in the north window of the ground floor of the renovated museum. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Alexander Calder’s 76-foot-long mobile still hangs in the atrium. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
“Revisiting the National Gallery of Art’s East Building, which is reopening Friday after a three-year renovation, is like greeting an old friend. She still has all the same familiar qualities, and conversation picks up as if no time has passed at all. But you also can’t help but notice: She looks good.”
A view of the new diagonal staircase in the National Gallery of Art’s East Building. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
The Alexander Calder mobile moves gently on its axis in the East Building's main atrium. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Katharina Fritsch's saturated-blue rooster sculpture, "Hahn/Cock" is on view in the building’s new sculpture terrace. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Pablo Picasso's "Head of a Woman." (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
“Visitors new to the National Gallery of Art’s East Building might not detect any sign that it has undergone a major renovation. The galleries of the I.M. Pei-designed modernist addition to the National Gallery have been closed for refurbishment since 2013. On Sept. 30, they will reopen with 12,250 square feet of new exhibition space, two new stairwells creating improved public flow through the galleries, some 500 permanent collection works on display (up from 350 before the redesign), two new sky-lit tower galleries devoted to giants of 20th-century art, and a new open-air sculpture terrace along Pennsylvania Avenue.”
The gallery’s East Building has reopened after a three-year renovation (Image © Dennis Brack/Blackstar, courtesy National Gallery of Art)
The new Roof Terrace of the East Building at the National Gallery of Art with a view of Nam June Paik’s Ugly Buddha and Ugly TV (1991–1996), Kenneth Snelson’s V-X (1968), Scott Burton’s two Rock Settees (1988), and Katharina Fritsch’s Hahn/Cock (2013), on longterm loan from Glenstone Museum (Image: Photo by Rob Shelley, courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC)
Works by Rothko in the new Tower Gallery (Image: courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC)
“Step inside and the differences become clear. The gallery, which reopens to the public on 30 September, has managed to carve out more than 12,250 sq. ft of additional exhibition space without expanding its physical footprint. The changes have inspired a comprehensive reinstallation of the collection that will transform the way more than four million annual visitors understand the story told by DC’s premier art museum.”
“The latest plan for what is being referred to as the 729 Washington Avenue North development — it’s mid-block between 7th Avenue and 8th Avenue — calls for an office building that faces Washington Avenue and a residential and parking garage building that fronts 3rd Street N. That public plaza is being pitched as a public space that would provide access to connecting paths.”
