The National Gallery of Art is expanding its resources for the deaf community! Taye Akinola, an American Sign Language (ASL) guide at the Gallery, introduces the museum’s two buildings and collection and also shares information about on-site programs and online features. These include monthly ASL at the NGA tours and 27 collection highlights videos in ASL. Please join us!

Earl A. Powell III, director of the National Gallery of Art, welcomes visitors to the East Building and modern art collection. The East Building audio tour explores a wide range of work from the turn of the twentieth century to the present day through the voices of several National Gallery curators, artists, and the building architect I.M. Pei.

This video introduces John Russell Pope’s design for the West Building Rotunda, which opened to the public on March 17, 1941 with a ceremony led by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The museum’s coffered dome and columns were inspired by the ancient Roman Pantheon. This video is the first of 27 that introduce the works of art featured on the Director’s Tour in American Sign Language.

The only artist to surpass the Renaissance painter Bellini’s reputation in Venice was his pupil and collaborator on this painting: Titian. This lively composition, which shows a scene about to erupt with sound and action, was painted for Duke Alfonso d’Este and illustrates Ovid’s poem “The Feasts” ( Fasti ). The Duke’s guests would have delighted in identifying the classical source and untangling the identities of the dozen gods, goddesses, and mythological beings.

Bellows became known early in his career for his uncompromising depictions of New York City, where he studied art and lived for 20 years until his death in 1925. As a major figure in the Ashcan School of urban realists, Bellows’s work captured the raw reality of everyday life in the city. This painting shows the corner of Madison Square at Broadway and Twenty-Third Street, which was notorious for its glut of advertising signs, including the city’s first electric sign.

Though associated with the post-impressionist symbolist group of Les Nabis, Bonnard rarely engaged with symbolist subject matter. Rather, he captured unguarded moments like this one and used his work to explore and experiment with color and color harmonies.

This panel, which might have been one portion of a triptych, illustrates the ars moriendi , or the “Art of Dying,” a popular theme at this time. Death, in the form of a skeleton, comes to claim a miser’s soul in his last moments. Despite the urging of an angel, who places his hand protectively on the dying man’s shoulder, he may be unable to resist the bag of gold and other worldly treasures proffered by the demons scattered throughout the room.

While this sculpture might seem abstract, Brancusi insisted that his works revealed the inner essence of his subjects. Brancusi did not have a large workshop or use plaster or clay models; rather, he worked alone with the materials, in this case carving stone and polishing brass.

Braque famously worked alongside Pablo Picasso as the two developed the new style of cubism around 1910. This painting is typical of a later phase in Braque’s career, when he incorporated elements of cubism into still lifes and other subjects. In this work, the wood grain on the table, the design of the wallpaper in the background, and the text on the newspaper emphasize the interplay of pattern and texture.

After studying scale models of the Gallery’s East Building before it was complete, Calder composed the original maquette, or small three-dimensional model, of this mobile. Starting with the bottom arm and working progressively upward, he established the centering for each part before attaching it to the next higher, unfinished section. Once the model was complete, it was enlarged to 32 times its original size and was constructed from aluminum.

This is the largest of four paintings Cézanne made of this model, named Michelangelo di Rosa, created when the artist was living in Paris. While the subject of a figure posed in classic contrapposto, in which the body twists, draws from a long artistic tradition, the flattened space of the room, the nearly abstract shapes of the background, and Cézanne’s use of color are innovations that drew on and shaped current artistic debates of the day.

Cole’s epic four-part series Voyage of Life weaves the theme of the four ages of man with the four seasons and the four times of day. It also touches on the Christian doctrine of resurrection. The painting shows a man who, stripped of his possessions, turns finally to prayer in a time of turbulence and uncertainty. Cole wrote of this painting that the forms in the sky represented suicide, intemperance, and murder. The man’s guardian angel shining from the upper corner gives hope for salvation.

The big sky, lush green groves, and languidly grazing cows immediately evoke the calm tranquility of a pastoral landscape. Constable was born and raised in Suffolk, a county near Essex northeast of London, where he developed an attachment to the rural countryside. The owner of Wivenhoe Park, who was also a close friend of the artist’s father, commissioned this painting.

This painting depicts the true story of the orphaned Brooks Watson, who, at fourteen years old, was attacked by a shark while swimming in Havana Harbor, Cuba. Watson was saved, but not before losing his right foot. He went on to enjoy a successful career as a merchant and politician, and proudly recounted his ordeal. Watson commissioned Copley to paint the work for a London orphanage, where it was intended to represent strength through adversity for an audience who could identify with Watson’s background.

Napoleon has risen from his desk after a long night’s work, his labors indicated by the nearly spent candle. The chair being pushed back has caused the carpet to bunch up and he has not taken the time to smooth his tousled hair or wrinkled leggings. Nevertheless Napoleon is dressed in and surrounded by symbols of his power, from his military uniform with sword laid across his chair to the rolled up Napoleonic Code and French royal fleurs-de-lys pattern on the chair’s cushion and arms.

Leonardo’s subtly painted portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci was probably commissioned on the occasion of her engagement at age 16 to Luigi Niccolini. A motto painted on the reverse—VIRTUTEM FORMA DECORAT (“Beauty adorns virtue”)—suggests that the young woman’s chastity was as pristine as her flawless complexion.

This work is typical of the Fauvist style, which Derain developed alongside Henri Matisse, featuring vibrant and unblended colors. This scene was painted when Derain visited London and captured similar subjects to those Monet had famously painted just a few years previously, though Derain’s color palette and perspective on the scenes contrast sharply with the impressionist master’s work.

At the center of the composition, a powerful black Gabriel stands astride earth and sea, summoning the nations of the world to judgment with his trumpet call.  This 1939 painting is based on an illustration Douglas had created more than a decade earlier to accompany James Weldon Johnson’s popular and influential book of poems titled God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse .  Johnson had been inspired by charismatic black preachers, while Douglas, in turn, was inspired by Johnson’s remarkable poetry.

The rough texture, somber color palette, and coarse style of Dubuffet’s paintings confront the viewer with their directness. In this work, he depicts a city in a graffiti-like figurative style. He created the animated, crudely drawn stick figures of this postwar apartment complex by scratching through black paint to reveal hidden, delicate colors beneath.

Fresh Widow is one of Duchamp’s “readymades”—commonplace objects that the artist signed and then exhibited as art. Working with a dealer in 1964, Duchamp oversaw the production of eight reproductions of his original Fresh Widow , of which this is the second. The title is a pun on the phrase “French window,” which alludes to both the doors commonly found in Parisian apartments and the new generation of widows created by World War I.

This is El Greco’s only painting of a mythological scene. Laocoön, a priest in the city of Troy, warned his countrymen not to accept the gift of the Trojan horse, which concealed enemy Greek soldiers. The gods punished him by sending serpents to strangle him and his sons. El Greco set the Greek myth against his adopted Spanish city of Toledo, which appears in other paintings by the artist. The highly expressive color and energetic brush strokes are also hallmarks of El Greco’s highly individual style.

This work is a perfect example of Frankenthaler’s technique of making pictures entirely by "staining," a process in which she poured thinned paint onto raw, unprimed canvas. This method results in fields of transparent color that seem to float in space, with the weave of the canvas establishing the flatness of the image. Her arrangement of colors and shapes often evoke the natural environment, and each work creates a unique visual space and atmosphere.

Gauguin’s unnerving Self-Portrait is painted on a dining room cupboard door from an inn in the Breton hamlet Le Pouldu in northwest France. The viewer must decide whether this disembodied head floating against a field of crimson and warm yellow represents Gauguin as Christ with a halo or is Satan holding the snake that tempted Eve to eat the forbidden apples, hanging directly above.

One of the great surrealist sculptors, Giacometti often incorporated themes of games and play into his early work, as with this piece. The form the artist uses here resembles a board game with moveable pieces, yet the nature of the game is unclear. The ambiguous space and unknowable rules of the “game” represented in No More Play make this piece feel like an object one might encounter in a dream.

This is one of several so-called color veil paintings Gorky made in 1944, in which films of paint have been washed unevenly across the canvas and evocative but indistinct forms have been brushed in. Gorky thinned his paint with turpentine and might have applied it with a turkey baster. Overall green and brown hues suggest a landscape, but there are no identifiable landscape forms and no spatial recession. Instead, vertical drips and the alternation of light and deep tones create a shifting, shimmering effect across the surface of the canvas.

Goya shows the marchesa dressed in the height of fashion with a wasp-waisted corset and the adoption of the “shepherdess” style popularized by Marie Antoinette. Her full skirt and broad-brimmed straw hat were also influenced by foreign fashions popular within Spain. The carnation she holds and the roses tucked into her skirt suggest that this portrait was probably painted on the occasion of her first marriage.

This painting presents Grünewald’s empathetic portrayal of Christ’s pain and suffering in addition to his triumphs. The dramatic poses of the figures surrounding the cross, as well as the intense colors, emphasize the anguish of the moment. Grünewald also drew on the biblical accounts of this scene, in which Saint Luke described a “darkness over all the earth” at the time of Christ’s passing, by depicting a scene plunged into darkness by a solar eclipse.

This work was one of several studies for the final piece, which is comprised of eight similar banners that now hang in the National Gallery of Australia. The entire project ended up being a swan song for Hesse, as she succumbed to brain cancer shortly after the final work was installed at its original home, the Finch College Museum of Art.

This is one of six silkscreened paintings that show enlarged handprints taken from declassified United States government documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. The handprints belong to soldiers accused of detainee abuse in Iraq, and the titles of these pieces are also taken from those documents.

Four boys perch on the high side of a steeply heeling catboat buffeted by choppy bottle-green water. The boat’s home port, Gloucester, is lettered on the stern. Homer painted this scene during a postwar period during which many Americans longed for representations of a more innocent time. The painting enjoyed immediate popularity when exhibited in the country’s centennial year of 1876. Homer would turn increasingly to painting sea and seaside scenes, especially around Gloucester, Massachusetts.

Hopper painted this work in South Truro, Massachusetts, where he and his wife had built a home and studio in 1934. Despite its bright palette and seemingly serene subject, Ground Swell echoes the themes of loneliness and escape typical of Hopper’s oeuvre. The blue sky, sun-kissed figures, and vast rolling water strike a calm note; however, the visible disengagement of the figures from each other and their noticeable preoccupation with the bell buoy at the center of the canvas belie the initial sense of serenity.

Johns was known early in his career for returning recognizable objects, like targets, to the visual arts following the intensely personal, gestural painting of the abstract expressionists. He presented these familiar items in a cool, seemingly detached, and often enigmatic manner. The tactile quality of his surfaces in works like this one stand out and are a testament to the close relationship Johns perceived between painting and sculpture.

This piece was created during a crucial turning-point in Judd’s career, when he moved from painting to overseeing the construction of large but simple three-dimensional objects. This piece sits on the ground without a pedestal, directly in the space of the viewer, and is unframed and exposed in a way that almost no previous sculpture had been. Judd took aim at what he saw as the continuing illusionism of European modernism, pursuing instead a purely lucid form that would exist simply as an object.

Kandinsky created dozens of compositions he called “improvisations” from 1909 to 1913. In this work, strong black lines and scrubbed patches of color course across the canvas, but their movement is constrained by a monumental triangular composition. The use of the term “improvisation” suggests spontaneous expression, while “sea battle” evokes a military engagement.

This work was created while Kelly was working in France from 1948 to 1954—a period when he realized his first abstractions. This was the first time he used differently sized, individually crafted stretchers in one painting, lending special significance to this work of his early oeuvre. Kelly's abstract works are derived intuitively, even though they may appear to be based on mathematical formulae, such as the ratio of one panel to another or to the work as a whole.

This work dates to early in Kirchner’s prolific career, when he was a founding member of the expressionist group called Die Brücke, or The Bridge, in Dresden in 1905. In this painting, Kirchner has depicted two nudes in a natural setting, rather than in the contrived space of an academic studio. This work is also an example of the artist’s use of bold, often crude, forms and vibrant color.

The artist brings a highly naturalistic style to this depiction of a mystical moment. The dim interior, illuminated only by a single candle flame, echoes the solemnity of Mary Magdalen’s expression. The candle dramatically highlights the figure’s gaze into the mirror as well as the backlit skull, which she touches lightly. The skull, mirror, and candle flame symbolize the transience of life and the Magdalen’s rejection of a life of luxury to follow Christ.

This painting was the first for which Lichtenstein borrowed an image directly from popular culture: a children’s book called Donald Duck: Lost and Found . He began this work by making a sketch from his source and then recomposing the image for narrative and formal purposes. He traced the drawing onto a canvas, making more adjustments, and then painted the dots using a perforated metal screen as a stencil, imitating industrial printing techniques. Lichtenstein would later refer to this work as his first pop art painting.

The top row of letters in this work are painted black and turned toward the wall so the viewer looks at the illuminated backs of the letters. The bottom row depicts the word upside down with the outward facing sides painted black, which allows the white neon light to reflect off the wall. This arrangement of skewed perspectives evokes the political turmoil caused by the election of America’s first black president and the country’s contemporaneous involvement in two wars.

Louis was a leader of the local Washington Color School, a branch of the larger color field movement. He is best known for experimenting with a process called staining, in which he diluted acrylic paints and poured them onto unprimed canvas. He then tipped, bent, or folded the canvas or its support to control how the color moved over the surface.

Manet’s tableau reflects on the isolated nature of modern life in this depiction of a group of disparate people. The artist sympathized with the displaced and marginalized poor population, a result of the dramatic redesigning of the Paris that created the now-familiar wide, tree-lined boulevards and neoclassical buildings.

This painting reimagines a boat ride into a haunted tunnel at an amusement park as the Middle Passage—the forced journey of slaves from Africa to the Americas. What might in other hands be a work of heavy irony becomes instead a delicate interweaving of the histories of painting and race. The canvas, which is stretched directly onto the wall, creates a screen or backdrop onto which viewers project their own associations triggered by the powerful imagery.

Matisse’s work as a fauvist painter was one phase in a lifelong engagement with color. This small but explosive work is celebrated as one of the most important early paintings of the fauve school, a style distinguished by a startling palette of saturated, unmixed colors and broad brushstrokes. This work was painted in Collioure, a small town on the Mediterranean coast of France, to which Matisse traveled in the summer of 1905 with André Derain, a fellow fauvist painter.

Mitchell was a leading figure in the group of artists known as the second generation of abstract expressionists. In this painting, the bold, animated lines against a white ground capture Mitchell’s spontaneous and impulsive painting method. She often drew upon childhood memories of Lake Michigan when composing paintings, some of which she called “expressionist landscapes.” Because they are totally abstract, the viewer is invited to connect to her works on an emotional level.

This is the only sculpture by Modigliani in the Gallery’s collection, which otherwise features his painted portraits and nudes. However, this sculpture reflects the artist’s distinctive stylization of the figure with the elongated features and almond-shaped eyes found in many of his paintings. Modigliani focused on sculpture from about 1909 to 1914, before his death from tuberculosis at age 35 in 1920.

Though totally abstract, Mondrian’s “neo-plastic” paintings attempt to capture the complex equilibrium found in nature. The reduced color palette and stark opposition of black vertical and horizontal lines against blocks of white and primary colors were meant to spiritually represent natural harmony. This was the first neo-plastic painting to be created in the lozenge, or diamond, format.

Two of Monet’s 30 renderings of the Rouen Cathedral are in the NGA collection. The artist ensured a good view of his subject by renting a second-story room in the hotel across the street from the church as a temporary studio. Throughout the day, he studied the effects of light and shade on the façade and captured them on canvas. Though these look like they might have been painted quickly, conservators have discovered that the paint dried in between layers, which means that Monet worked on the canvases slowly, over a long period of time.

This painting is the first of 14 abstract representations of the Stations of the Cross, and it is also the first work to feature Newman’s signature “zips.” These vertical elements, which could be sharply or loosely defined, were used to punctuate the single-hued fields of his canvases. This series exemplifies Newman’s efforts to blend abstract expressionism with mystical and spiritual subjects.

O’Keeffe, an important artist in the development of American modernism, is best known today for her abstracted representations of flowers. This painting is one of a series of six depictions of jack-in-the-pulpit flowers, which the artist would have found near her husband’s family estate in Lake George, New York. Each painting in the series zooms in closer to the center of the flower and becomes more abstract.

Paik was born in Seoul, South Korea, but grew up and lived in Japan, Germany, and, finally, New York. Paik pioneered the use of new media, including video, in art. For this work, Paik altered a 19th-century Japanese scroll by adding his handprint and placing a flashing red light behind it. The juxtaposition of a traditional art form with modern technology would become a hallmark of Paik’s work.

This painting shows a group of itinerant, socially marginalized circus performers who would have traveled from town to town to earn a living. Though the figures in this work stand close to one another, they are emotionally remote. The bleak, featureless landscape enhances the feeling of isolation and estrangement. This early work could reflect the sympathy Picasso felt for those who shared the transient lifestyle he had experienced in Paris before settling in a ramshackle apartment in Montemarte in 1904, a year before this was painted.

The boy in this work was probably inspired by a 15th- or 16th-century German print; he is shown pulling ropes, perhaps symbolizing his effort to reach for the clouds. To create the background, Polke stitched together fragments of fabric and dipped the resulting surface in polyester resin. He then poured paint on the back of the work and shifted the canvas to create different shapes. Finally, he painted the figure itself. All told, this work took Polke a year to complete.

Pollock’s drip painting technique was instrumental in the development of action painting, one method of the abstract expressionist style. Abstract expressionist painters sought to create works that evoked pure emotion from the viewer. In this piece, splashing lines, puddles, and drips create multiple layers that suggest energy and depth. The result seems spontaneous yet controlled, intuitive yet thoughtfully considered.

The round format of this painting, called a tondo , was popular in Florence, where Raphael lived and learned from fellow masters like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo from 1504 to 1508. However, this painting represents a turning point. The idealized figures, saturated yet delicate hues, and classical landscape show a shift in style from his intimate Madonnas painted in Florence to a more majestic style developed in Rome after 1508.

Rembrandt painted, drew, and etched dozens of self-portraits over his lifetime. Together, his self-portraits form an extended study of a wide range of human emotions and states of mind. This work was painted shortly after the artist had declared bankruptcy and experienced other hardships. It is tempting to discern an aura of melancholy in the serious expression, but the steady gaze and expressive handling of the paint emphasizing the eyes lends a sense of dignity and strength to the sitter.

This painting illustrates the power of Daniel’s faith to protect him from the restless, roaring lions. During the Protestant Reformation, this biblical tale about the trials of an early Christian martyr was used by the Catholic Church to represent perseverance through persecution. Rubens captures the restrained yet menacing energy of the oversized lions with their dynamic poses and lifelike appearance. The strong upward diagonal created by Daniel’s body and red garment indicate the drama of the moment of Daniel’s salvation as the rock sealing the cavernous prison is rolled away.

Saint-Gaudens’s memorial commemorates the sacrifice of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the men of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the first black regiment to fight for the North in the Civil War. Half of the 600 men in the regiment were killed, captured, or missing after their assault on Fort Wagner, South Carolina on July 18, 1863. News of their bravery was spread immediately by both Union and Confederate troops. Saint-Gaudens completely reimagined the traditional equestrian monument by transforming the usual man on a horse into this frieze, which commemorates the soldiers as well as their leader, who was the first to die.

Ranuccio Farnese’s serious expression and formal costume contrast with his fresh-faced youthfulness. The work was painted when the twelve-year-old Farnese was sent by his grandfather, Pope Paul III, to become prior, or head of house, of a property belonging to the elite Knights of Malta, a religious order. He wears the Maltese cross on his robe. Ranuccio went on to craft an illustrious ecclesiastical career. Titian offers hints of the sitter’s future success with the resolute set of the boy’s shoulders and surprising sense of possession for one so young.

Turner’s atmospheric harbor view blends the heavy, thick smoke coming from the fiery braziers with an evocative, romantic seascape. The men heave coals onto the sailing ships that line the shore in a forest of prickly masts. The moon reflects on the still water so brightly that that the viewer momentarily wonders whether the scene is illuminated by the afternoon sun.

The tall narrow format of this painting suggests that this would have been the left wing of a triptych. Van Eyck emphasizes the meaning of the annunciation, the moment when Mary learns of the impending birth of Christ from the angel Gabriel, by including symbolic references to the Old Testament even as this story marks the start of the New Testament. For example, the floor tiles illustrate the stories of David and Goliath as well as Samson destroying the Philistine temple. Both foreshadow events of Christ’s life and the salvation of humankind.

Van Gogh created at least 36 self-portraits. This was one of the last he completed in his decade-long career and the first he painted after suffering a severe breakdown in 1889. Van Gogh shows himself holding his painting tools. It appears that the work was completed in one sitting.

Vermeer echoes the stillness of the instrument held lightly in the woman’s hands with a masterful balance of color, light, and shade throughout the composition. The scene is rendered with acute attention to detail and naturalism but also contains an allegorical subtext. The figure’s action of balancing the scales and her placement in front of a painting depicting the Last Judgment reminds the viewer to live a temperate and virtuous life.

This painting is one of a set of five decorative works commissioned in 1895, all of which show intimate interior scenes, Vuillard's principal subject. All five display rich harmonies in a restricted range of color and densely arranged, intricate patterns. The introspective woman arranging flowers here perhaps represents the red-haired Misia, an accomplished pianist and wife of the patron of the series. Vuillard adopted the symbolist idea of synesthesia, whereby one sense can evoke another. The sumptuous visual qualities of Vuillard's reds in this work may suggest the lush chords of music that Misia performed.

Whistler knew that his statement about this work, “My painting simply represents a girl dressed in white standing in front of a white curtain,” was a provocation to viewers. A portrait of his mistress Joanna Hiffernan posed in an informal housedress with flowing hair, an impassive expression, and standing on a white bearskin rug, told Victorians perhaps more than they wished to know about Hiffernan’s worldiness, yet is a tour de force of painted texture and a study of white.