Release Date: January 13, 2011

Permanent Collection Audio Tours for Adults and Children Now Offered Free of Charge at National Gallery of Art

Washington, DC—The National Gallery is now offering audio tours of its renowned permanent collection for adults and children on new equipment with color screens and high-quality sound—free of charge for the first time in the Gallery's history. The Director's Tour for adults features Gallery experts insights into the collections many masterpieces. Highlights of this tour are offered in a variety of languages. Last summer, the Gallery also introduced a childrens audio tour designed especially for ages 7–12, exploring 50 paintings in the West Building.

These audio tours allow visitors to enjoy the Gallery at their own pace, selecting works of interest as they go, and deciding the length of time they spend with each object. The new, improved audio tour equipment from Acoustiguide gives visitors a choice between touch screen and button-based models.

Audio tours are available to pick up at the West Building Mall entrance. For group reservations of audio tours (10 or more), please call (202) 842-6592. For more information, please visit www.nga.gov/tours.

The Director's Tour

Adult visitors may tour the galleries while listening to the Gallery's director, curators, and conservators discussing more than 130 beloved masterpieces by artists from the Italian Renaissance to the era of French impressionism. Among these works is the portrait of Ginevra de' Benci, a teenaged fiancée who posed for Leonardo da Vinci, then in his twenties. It is the artists only painting in the the Americas.

The Director's Tour; Highlights in Foreign Languages

The director's introduction and commentary at 26 stops are available as free audio guides in Spanish, French, Russian, Japanese, and Mandarin.

Childrens Tour

Animated by actors speaking the parts of people and animals in works of art, the Gallery's audio tour gives children aged 7–12 a chance to get up close and personal with some of the worlds greatest paintings on display in the West Building. Prompts and pauses encourage kids to stop, look, and think, making the tour an interactive way to experience the creativity of masters including Rembrandt van Rijn, Peter Paul Rubens, Claude Monet, and Winslow Homer. This free audio guide is made possible through the generous support of MSST Foundation.