The Phillips Collection has celebrated American art and artists since it opened to the public in 1921. From the outset, Duncan Phillips intended that this gallery in the nation’s capital was to be a champion for the country’s artists. He devoted his life to finding, fostering, and collecting the very best of American art, particularly the work of living artists guided by their individual visions, rather than by popular trends. Over the course of 50 years Phillips built a world-class collection of nearly 2,000 works of modern art of which 1,400 were American, most of them acquired while the