Eero Saarinen, assisted by a team including Charles Eames and Ralph Rapson, took the lead in designing Saarinen, Swanson, and Saarinen's entry in this two-part competition, sponsored by the 1939 Smithsonian Gallery of Art Commission, for a building on the Mall. The new building was to sit directly opposite John Russell Pope's classical National Gallery of Art, still under construction. The firm won first place, out of a field of 408 entrants, with a scheme calling for an asymmetrical composition of one- to four-story volumes clad in marble with metal trim. The commission was chaired by city planner Frederic A. Delano and composed of architects Walter Gropius, John A. Holabird, George Howe, and Henry R. Shepley, with Joseph Hudnut serving as professional adviser and Thomas D. Mabry, executive director of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, as technical adviser. An oversize mounted photograph of the project model is the only documentation for this project in the collection.
