The Washington Post/Roxanne Roberts: Washington VIPs bid farewell to Rusty Powell, the longtime director of the National Gallery of Art

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Washington VIPs bid farewell to Rusty Powell, the longtime director of the National Gallery of Art

Earl "Rusty" Powell. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post) (William O'Leary/Washington, D.C.)
By Roxanne Roberts
October 18

The long goodbye has started for Earl “Rusty” Powell, who is stepping down at the end of the year as director of the National Gallery of Art after 26 years in the job. The first of many thank-you parties was held Tuesday night at the home of Buffy Cafritz with a VIP guest list that included Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), former Kennedy Center chairman Jim Johnson, Librarian of Congress Emeritus James Billington, Ann Jordan, Barbara Allbritton, Maureen Scalia, Clarice Smith and other longtime supporters of the arts.

Cafritz began with a toast: “Rusty, for your remarkable service to the National Gallery and to our country. You have our profound thanks.” Leahy, who has been a regular patron of the gallery since his days as a Georgetown Law student, flew down from Vermont to give his own tribute. “When you came here — what a change,” he said. “It was wonderful before. It became a place unlike anything in the country, in the world.”

Retirements tend to bring out superlatives, so Powell was appropriately humble.

“A good friend of mine said, ‘You get to go out on top, and you still have tread on the tires,’ ” he told the crowd. Still, it seemed like a good time to ask him whether there were any regrets.

“Each director of the National Gallery has had a different brief: David Finley and Paul Mellon opened the gallery, John Walker was more or less responsible for bringing in what we call the ‘founding collections,’ and Carter Brown expanded the gallery in terms of exhibitions and programs, and built the East Building,” explained Powell, who will become director emeritus. “My time at the gallery has really been to expand it nationally and internationally — educationally, the website — and renovate the entire complex, a $400 million project. So I’m not looking over my shoulder at leaving things behind. It’s a great position right now for another director to move in a different dimension.”
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Roxanne Roberts
Roxanne Roberts is a reporter covering Washington's social, political and philanthropic power brokers. She has been at The Washington Post since 1988, working for the Style section as a feature writer and columnist. Follow