Word: mellone
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...Cushions & Big Lights. Washington cab drivers are likely to refer to the museum as "the Mellon gallery," which is just what its founder, Financier Andrew Mellon, hoped to avoid. He wanted to build no personal monument but a palace for Everyman, which would be a lasting glory to the nation. The neoclassic building cost Mellon $15 million, is as palatial as any structure to be found in the Western Hemisphere. Its central dome was modeled on the Pantheon in Rome. The rotunda and windowless exhibition wings are constructed of over 40 kinds and shades of marble, from "Istrian Nuage" (Italy...
...turning his own collection over to the gallery, Mellon urged that it be used as a criterion for further acquisitions in order "to prevent the introduction ... of inferior works of art." To assure a continuing high standard, he set up a self-perpetuating board of trustees which examines all gift horses with a dentist's doubtful eye. Since Mellon's death in 1937, vast bequests from Samuel Kress and Joseph Widener (old masters), Lessing Rosenwald (prints and drawings) and Chester Dale (old masters and modern French paintings) have swelled the collection. It now numbers 1,721 paintings...
From Politics to Porcelain. Income from the gallery's private endowment (principally Mellon money) comes close to $500,000 a year,* is used to pay the salaries of the executive officers, to finance educational activities (lectures, television shows, concerts) and occasionally to buy new acquisitions. Maintenance cost, including the salaries of 322 civil service personnel, are borne by the Government. These costs come to $1,300,000 a year. In the same period, an average 1,779,088 taxpayers visit the gallery, enjoy a feast of treasures that no Medici prince or Bourbon King ever matched...
...With congressional permission, the Mellon grant was deposited in the Treasury and guaranteed 4% interest. The Library of Congress gets 4% on a similar deposit, and the Smithsonian Institution draws...
...GIRL WITH A RED HAT, by JAN VERMEER of Delft is the sort of picture that led one critic to exclaim: Of Vermeer we know nothing save that he was a materialistic Dutchman who applied paint to canvas with a dexterity and charm that have never been equaled." (The Mellon Collection...