The foundation's aim is to maintain and preserve the works of Jasper Cropsey and the art movement he was a part of, the Hudson River School.

The foundation's stated aim is to preserve the moral, artistic and religious values of Jasper Cropsey and the Hudson River School,[3] as well as to "recapture a little sense of stability, security and beauty that was so much a part of the 19th century".

[4][7] In turn, the NCF acquired a 6-acre (2.4 ha)[9] parcel of land and the village's existing public works garage, on a site that was formerly the town dump for decades, and was called Frog Hollow around Cropsey's time.

[9] Beginning in the late 1980s, the NCF contracted the construction of an intricately landscaped 19th-century arts complex with three buildings, a pond, and a garden, designed by Peter Gisolfi Associates of Hastings.

The society urged the village's planning board to put a hold on construction so the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation could make preliminary tests in the ravine.

The NCF was opposed to archaeological studies as it would require dynamiting the foundation and would disturb the fragile site, including a 125-year-old retaining wall.

The construction was approved pending the archaeological study, paid for by the NCF and directed by a state-approved archaeologist with a specialty in early industry.

The NCF gave them a $42,000 grant and a 5-year $1 lease to a cottage next to Ever Rest, which the historical society used until its relocation to its current home, the Henry Draper Observatory.

[13] Then-US Republican Senator Fred Thompson brought the idea of the sculpture garden to the university's chancellor Joe B. Wyatt, who visited the NCF and decided to partner with the organization.

The final piece would also be by Wyatt, a sculpture named Tree of Knowledge placed in front of the Jean and Alexander Heard Library.

An art professor found the sculptures to not achieve the school's goals of quality and diversity, noting one material, one presentation, and generic ideas symbolized by the works.

Judson Newbern, associate vice chancellor of the college, admitted the tree looks dead, and requested Wyatt weld leaves and buds onto his work.

It was noted that the NCF appeared right-leaning, with stated goals to "advance and promote the values inherent in the 19th century...including the belief that God created nature".

[9][17] In 2006, the NCF spent $500,000 to create a Christian docudrama Lost Letters of Faith, a story about King Abgar of Edessa.

Terry Lindvall, a film and religious studies scholar and a former president of Regent University, assembled filmmakers for the drama.

[18] Another of their film projects, called Cradle of Genius, focused on divine inspiration and the composers Brahms, Puccini, and Richard Strauss.

Adjacent to the house, the property contains a permanent sculpture garden with ten bronze busts of significant Hudson River School artists.

[3] The bright yellow board-and-batten[24] Carpenter Gothic[8] cottage is on the National Register of Historic Places,[4] and was Cropsey's home from 1885 until his death in 1900.

[8] The Gallery of Art building is located in a ravine 60 feet (18 m)[9] beneath Ever Rest, overlooking the nearby Hudson River and the Palisades and behind a commuter parking lot of the Hastings-on-Hudson Metro-North station.

[8] The site's administration building houses the office of American Arts Quarterly, a publication for Hudson River Realistic painting, with a circulation of about 3,000.

[3] New York Times art critic Roberta Smith found the building to be "garishly inappropriate and amateurish", with "badly scaled architecture".

[3] The building also has commissioned sculptures and religious statues, including a replica of an inscribed lintel, with a message from King Abgar of Edessa to Jesus Christ.