A Man in Full

Paul Mellon (1907 - 1999), one of the founders of the National Racing Museum and Hall of Fame, my place of employ, led a storied existence. Born into vast wealth, he could have spent his days in indolence and dissipation, but instead was a man of real accomplishment despite his family’s eye-watering riches. The National Art Gallery in Washington, DC, and the Yale Center for British Art are just two of the magnificent institutions that owe their existence to him (there are many, many others). Mellon’s interests were expansive and he always went at them with exacting discipline and intellectual rigor. These included architecture, fine art and thoroughbred breeding and racing among others. His mother was English and, in graduate school, he developed a keen interest in English history and culture. "It was while I was at Cambridge that I embarked on the dangerous seas of collecting", Mr Mellon once said - and he was superbly good at it. Now there’s a development I want to tell you about.