Capital Culture: J. Carter Brown, the National Gallery of Art, and the Reinvention of the Museum Experience

Abstract

J. Carter Brown (1934–2002) was one of the most important museum leaders in American history and the closest thing the country has had to a minister of culture. Beginning in 1961, when he joined the National Gallery of Art as assistant to then director John Walker, and then as director from 1969 to 1993, Brown transformed an institution first authorized by Congress to care for Andrew Mellon's art collection and the neoclassical building on the National Mall that housed it. His accomplishments still amaze: construction of the gallery's modernist East Building; acquisition of the first Leonardo da Vinci painting for an American museum; corporate-sponsored “blockbusters” such as “Treasures of Tutankhamen,” which drew hundreds of thousands of visitors; audience-friendly gallery design; the use of television and other media for art education; creation of the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts; aggressive merchandising and public-relations campaigns; and gala openings for foreign royals and their counterparts in American business and government. Brown also played a leading role in remaking the built environment of Washington, D.C., during three decades as chairman of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts. He brilliantly resolved the controversy over the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and (for better or worse) saw the National World War II Memorial to completion.

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