Wilmerding, a curator, deputy director and trustee at the museum, is a renowned scholar and author who influenced generations of scholars and curators. The gift will establish the John Wilmerding Fund for Education in American Art and will support internships, programs and digital initiatives at the gallery.

“He’s been producing important material, books articles, lectures classes, on the history of American art since the 1960s,” said NGA Deputy Director and Chief Curator Franklin Kelly about Wilmerding, who left NGA to become professor of American Art at Princeton University.

Kelly said he remembers going to a library in 1976 to do some research. “I looked at the shelves of American art, which were relatively slim, and I kept coming across John’s books over and over again.”

The grant will be used to expand many education programs, including digital and multi-generational initiatives. It will support an academic internship, an annual symposium and an annual Community Celebration. The first, set for Oct. 22, coincides with the Sept. 30 re-opening of the museum’s East Building.

Some of the programs funded by the gift may extend beyond American art, but it will always be a focus, said Lynn Russell, head of education.

Wilmerding joined the National Gallery in 1977 as its first curator of American art. He was promoted to senior curator and then served as deputy director from 1983 to 1988, when he left to teach at Princeton University.

During his tenure at NGA he organized the influential “American Light: The Luminist Movement,” an exhibition both Kelly and Russell viewed.

“It was a sprawling, and I use the word sprawling in the most glorious way, look at American landscape painting. It turned people’s heads,” Kelly said. “It was a game-changer,” added Russell.

Wilmerding returned to the NGA to serve as a trustee from 2005 to 2013, including a five-year stint as chairman. Now retired and living in Maine, he declined to be interviewed.

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