UK's National Gallery will use $500 million in donations for a new wing and expanded collection

Britain’s National Gallery has announced it will use almost half a billion dollars in donations to open a new wing that will allow it to expand its collection into modern art

LONDON -- Britain’s National Gallery announced Tuesday that it will use a whopping 375 million pounds ($510 million) in donations to open a new wing that, for the first time, will include modern art.

Founded in 1824, the gallery has amassed a centuries-spanning collection of Western paintings by artists from Leonardo da Vinci to J.M.W Turner and Vincent van Gogh — but almost nothing created after the year 1900. The modern era has been left to other galleries, including London’s Tate Modern.

That will change when the gallery opens a new wing to be constructed on land beside its Trafalgar Square site that is currently occupied by a hotel and offices. An architectural competition will be held to pick a design.

The gallery on London’s Trafalgar Square says money for the projects includes the two biggest donations ever publicly reported by any museum or gallery. It got 150 million pounds ($204 million) from the Crankstart foundation founded by Silicon Valley venture capitalist Michael Moritz and his wife, writer Harriet Heyman, and the same amount from the Julia Rausing Trust run by Tetra Pak heir Hans Rausing.

National Gallery director Gabriele Finaldi said the aim is “to be the place where the U.K. public and visitors from across the globe can enjoy the finest painting collection in the world from medieval times to our own, in a superb architectural setting.”

The gallery said it will build its collection of post-1900 works in collaboration with Tate, which holds the U.K.’s leading collections of British art and post-1900 international art.

Tate director Maria Balshaw said the organization “looks forward to working closely with colleagues at the National Gallery on loans, curatorial and conservational expertise to support the development of their new displays.”