Smithsonian American Art Museum Landmark located in Washington, D.C.'s downtown cultural district. It is considered an example of Greek Revival architecture in the United States. It was designed by architects Robert Mills, and Thomas U. Walter. During the 1990s, the Smithsonian Institution worked on restoring the building. The Smithsonian completed another renovation of the building in July 1, 2006. The 2000-2006 renovation restored many of the building’s exceptional architectural features: restoring the porticos modeled after the Parthenon in Athens, a curving double staircase, colonnades, vaulted galleries, large windows, and skylights as long as a city block. During the renovation, the Lunder Conservation Center, the
Smithsonian Institution same year, the Smithsonian signed an agreement to take over the Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration (now the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum). The National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum opened in the Old Patent Office Building (built in 1867) on October 7, 1968. The reuse of an older building continued with the opening of the Renwick Gallery in 1972 in the 1874 Renwick-designed art gallery originally built by local philanthropist William Wilson Corcoran to house the Corcoran Gallery of Art. The first new museum building to open since the National Museum of Natural