Don't let the name confuse you. The Corcoran Gallery of Art may sound like a commercial gallery, but it's every inch a museum. The only things for sale here are the gifts in the museum shop (and sometimes items connected with an occasional traveling show, such as the ornaments and trinkets that could be purchased from its 1996 "Faberge; and Finland: Exquisite Objects" exhibition.

Built in 1897 from a design by Ernest Flagg, the massive yet elegant building of neo-Grecian architecture is actually the second home of William Wilson Corcoran's art collection. In 1869, his fabulous trove of 19th-century American painting and sculpture was originally housed in what is now the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution. But as his collection grew, the banker and philanthropist found he needed bigger closets and more wall space.

Today, the collection continues to grow, including not only works by such American masters as Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Cole and Rembrandt Peale, but numerous Dutch, Flemish, French and other European paintings as well. In 1925, the Corcoran inherited from U.S. Senator William A. Clark the Salon Dore, an entire 18th-century room from the Parisian Hotel de Clermont, whose splendidly gilded ornamentation has only recently been restored. An extensive photographic collection and an ever-widening selection of contemporary art from around the world round out the registry, which includes a number of pieces from our own back yard: works by the District's Sam Gilliam, Renee Stout and David Mordini, to name a few.

As the Corcoran moves into the 21st century, the institution has grown further and further outward from its core aesthetic. One obvious sign of its vitality is that 200-year-old portraits of long-dead generals may, on any given day, gaze down on a Mexican performance artist eating a life-size man made of molded pink Jell-O. The Corcoran may have a lot of very old canvases, but it's also not afraid of interactive computer art, of performance, of video and the expanding horizon of the camera.

The single D.C. museum most dedicated to the local art scene, the Corcoran is a regular sponsor of and participant in the biennial "ArtSites" survey of regional art. It was the Corcoran that stepped in and rescued the late Washington Project for the Arts when it folded from fiscal difficulties in 1995, resuscitating it as the WPA/Corcoran. And the museum continues to run Washington's only accredited art college, the Corcoran School of Art, housed in the museum's basement.

In 1996, the Institute of Museum Services honored the Corcoran's "meaningful public outreach" in such exhibits as "Raised by Wolves" and "Hospice," shows of photography that examined, respectively, teenage runaways and terminal health care.

-- Michael O'Sullivan