Washington's National Gallery of Art has acquired a collection of about 5,250 prints dating from 1875 to 1975 and valued at $5 million from Reba and Dave Williams and the Print Research Foundation, reports the New York Times. Five thousand of the prints are from the foundation; the remaining 250 are from the couple's personal collection and were purchased by the gallery for an undisclosed sum. The foundation, founded by the Williams' five years ago, is located in Stamford, Connecticut.

Included in the acquisition are prints by about 2,000 American artists such as Winslow Homer, Childe Hassam, Thomas Moran, and George Bellows, as well as Ashcan School artists like John Sloan and Peggy Bacon; American modernists and precisionists like Louis Lozowick, Charles Sheeler, and Stuart Davis; and regional figures like Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood. Several singular works are included in the collection: Hassam’s Lion Gardiner House, Easthampton from 1920, widely considered his best print, and the rare New York, circa 1925, by Lozowick.

The Williams' have been collecting prints since the 1970s and have donated works to a number of institutions in the past. They chose the National Gallery for this collection because the works are a good fit, according to Dave Williams. “There was a fair amount of overlap with the Met, too many mutual holdings. And although we have supported the British Museum, we wanted to keep an American collection in America.”

The collection strengthens the gallery's holdings where there had been gaps. Judith Brodie, the gallery's curator of modern prints and drawings said, "It’s a perfect marriage. Their collection creates a very broad history of American printmaking from the late 19th century to around 1975."

The Williams' research library, with over 2,000 volumes, journals, and periodicals, as well as the foundation's building in Stamford, are also being given to the National Gallery. Officials say the building will be sold at some point, with the proceeds going toward the gallery's endowment.