“They have seen across these last few years, rooms full of painting and sculpture by Americans, walls covered with painting[s] by Americans—some of it good, some of it not so good, but all of it native, human, eager and alive — all of it painted by their own kind in their own country, and painted about things they know and look at often and have touched and loved.”

—President Franklin D. Roosevelt

Address at the Dedication of the National Gallery of Art