$116 million new endowment from philanthropist Mitchell Rales becomes the National Gallery’s largest programming gift in history

Philanthropist Mitchell Rales has committed $116 million to the National Gallery of Art, establishing the largest program-specific endowment in the institution’s history and transforming a successful pilot into a permanent national initiative.

The Mitchell P. Rales Family Foundation gift fully endows “Across the Nation,” a program that will lend masterworks from the Gallery’s collection to small and mid-sized museums across the country on an ongoing basis.

Structured as perpetual endowment, the funds will cover the entire cost of long-term loans—including shipping, crating, insurance, climate-controlled transport, installation, security, and local marketing—removing financial barriers that have historically kept many institutions from borrowing major works.

In the pilot phase, funded by earlier Rales support, paintings and works by artists such as Georgia O’Keeffe, Rembrandt, Botticelli, Mark Rothko, Henri Matisse, Edgar Degas, and Dorothea Lange reached approximately 900,000 visitors across ten institutions. The new endowment scales and secures that impact indefinitely.

The National Gallery has described the gift as “transformational” and “historic,” noting it as the largest single contribution ever made to support programming at the museum. Unlike many past mega-gifts focused on new buildings, capital projects, or the donation of private collections, this endowment is dedicated to a single, branded, mission-driven program—ensuring masterpieces from the Gallery’s holdings of more than 160,000 works (most of which remain in storage) will circulate nationally in perpetuity.

The timing aligns with America’s 250th anniversary.

Both the Gallery and the Rales Foundation frame the program as a national service gesture at a moment when public arts funding faces headwinds.

As Rales observed, when support is being withdrawn, “somebody’s got to pick up the slack.”

Rales, who was raised in a Jewish family as one of four sons of prominent philanthropist Norman Rales, carries forward a family legacy of giving that includes the Norman and Ruth Rales Foundation and support for Jewish communal organizations such as Ruth & Norman Rales Jewish Family Services in Florida.

This $116 million commitment fits squarely within that larger vision of building enduring institutions. In 2023, he transferred $1.9 billion to the Glenstone Foundation, increasing its assets to roughly $4.6 billion—comparable to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s endowment—to secure the sculpture park and museum’s future in perpetuity.

The National Gallery gift reflects the same mindset: targeted, large-scale, and engineered for permanence rather than one-off impact.

In the wider arts-philanthropy landscape, the donation stands out for its focus on circulation over bricks-and-mortar or naming rights.

Through this gift, Mitchell Rales has anchored his name not to a building, but to a living, nationwide program that will keep great art moving and visible for generations.