Fenimore Art Museum - Cooperstown-NY - U.S.A.

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The Fenimore Art Museum is the showcase of the New York State Historical Association, which is the not-for-profit corporate entity governing the operations of the museum. The New York State Historical Association was founded in 1899 by New Yorkers who were interested in promoting greater knowledge of the early history of the state. They hoped to encourage original research, to educate general audiences by means of lectures and publications, to mark places of historic interest with tablets or signs, and to start a library and museum to hold manuscripts, paintings, and objects associated with the history of the state.

It was an ambitious undertaking proposed by the founders when they held their first official meeting on March 21, 1899, in the village of Lake George. But time has justified their optimism and the Association has grown dramatically during the intervening century into a successful and multifaceted institution.

In 1926, Horace Moses, another New Yorker interested in the history of the state, donated a permanent home in Ticonderoga, New York for the Association. The structure was a replica of John Hancock's famous house in Boston. In addition to Hancock House, Moses also gave a separate endowment to help run the Association.

In 1939 Stephen Carlton Clark offered the Association a new home in the village of Cooperstown Cooperstown. Clark, an avid collector, took an active interest in expanding the holdings of the Association and in 1944 donated Fenimore House, one of his family's properties, to be used as a new headquarters and museum. The impressive neo-Georgian structure was built in the 1930s on the site of James Fenimore Cooper's early 19th century farmhouse on the shore of Otsego Lake, Cooper's Glimmerglass.

Fenimore House was large enough to have both extensive exhibition galleries as well as office and library space. The collections and programs continued to expand and a separate library building was constructed in 1968. In 1995 a new 18,000 square foot wing was added to Fenimore House to house the Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection which is one of the nation's premier collections of American Indian Art. In 1999 in recognition of our world class collections we renamed the Fenimore House Museum to the Fenimore Art Museum.

The New York State Historical Association is a private, non-governmental educational organization. It is closely affiliated with its sister organization, The Farmers' Museum.

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Columbus Museum of Art - Columbus-Ohio - U.S.A.

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Columbus Museum of Art’s mission is to create great experiences with great art for everyone. Whether we are presenting an exhibition, designing an art-making activity, serving a lunch, or giving directions to a visitor, we are guided by a belief in advocacy, quality, community, integrity, and creativity. We believe that art speaks to each and every one of us in different ways. Art inspires. Art challenges. Art thinks.

Approximately 200,000 people tour the Museum each year, many participating in programs designed for diverse audiences from school children to scholars. Art begins a conversation within ourselves and our community. The Columbus Museum of Art is where that conversation begins.

CMA houses art that speaks to diverse interests and styles. We have an outstanding collection of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century American and European modern art. Our collection includes spectacular examples of Impressionism, German Expressionism, and Cubism. We are also recognized for extraordinary regional collections such as the largest public collection of woodcarvings by Columbus folk artist Elijah Pierce and the world’s largest repository of paintings and lithographs by Columbus native George Bellows, who is widely regarded as the finest American artist of his generation.

In 2001, the Museum acquired The Photo League collection which includes photographs by artists Berenice Abbott, W. Eugene Smith and Weegee. In 2005, the Museum acquired the Philip and Suzanne Schiller Collection of American Social Commentary Art 1930–1970, considered to be, according to Virginia Mecklenburg, Chief Curator of Smithsonian American Art Museum, “unquestionably the most important collection of its kind in the country,” The collection includes works by Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, Ben Shahn, Lucile Blanch, Lucienne Bloch, Moses Soyer, George Tooker, Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Rockwell Kent, and George Grosz. Today a commitment to contemporary art, folk art, and photography continues the Museum’s dedication to showcasing art of our time.

The Museum also presents a rich menu of traveling and CMA-organized special exhibitions that reflect the diverse voices in our community. Noteworthy exhibitions organized in part or whole by the Museum include Symphonic Poem: The Art of Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson, the first retrospective exhibition of Columbus artist Aminah Robinson; and Illusions of Eden: Visions of the American Heartland, chosen by the U.S. State Department as one of only three Millennium projects to tour outside the United States to help promote political, economic and cultural ties and exchanges.

A series of exhibitions inspired by CMA’s permanent collection have garnered critical and popular acclaim including Renoir’s Women, Edgar Degas: The Last Landscapes, and In Monet’s Garden: The Lure of Giverny. An emphasis on collaborations with organizations such as The Ohio State University, Ohio Arts Council, Franklin Park Conservatory, COSI, Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, Phoenix Theater Circle, CAPA, and Greater Columbus Arts Council further enhances Museum exhibitions and programming.

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Columbia Museum of Art - Columbia-South Carolina - U.S.A.

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We're more than just a pretty space. With dynamic exhibitions and fun programs, the CMA is redefining the modern museum as the bustling social hub of our community.

The Columbia Museum of Art is a charitable nonprofit organization that celebrates creativity and champions arts education in our community.

We are grateful for the generous support and vision of the City of Columbia, Richland County, and the numerous donors and supporters who share the CMA’s mission to educate, enrich, and inspire the community and visitors to our state.

The Columbia Museum of Art opened to the public on March 23, 1950, at its original site on Bull and Senate Streets in the historic Taylor House in Columbia, South Carolina. An art, natural history, and science museum, including a planetarium, the CMA became Columbia's premier cultural institution beginning with its growth during the 50s and 60s. The museum's art collection grew significantly during these years with large additions of Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque art from the Kress Foundation of New York. These gifts formed the nucleus of an important European collection. During the 70s and 80s, the museum pared down its wider role as a general museum with the deaccession of its natural history collection and experienced the impressive growth of internationally significant art acquisitions in European, American, Asian, and modern and contemporary fine and decorative art.

At the request of the City of Columbia and Richland County, the CMA developed a plan to move downtown and to serve as the cultural anchor in the revitalization of the city’s Main Street corridor.  The new museum facility at 1515 Main Street, an adaptive re-use project designed and engineered by Stevens and Wilkinson, opened on July 18, 1998. This new building allowed the CMA to showcase its substantial art collection and to provide more space for dynamic programming. The museum currently has over 20,000 square feet of gallery space, which allows us to bring a wide range of exhibitions to South Carolina, as well as to provide the necessary space for the proper presentation of our collection, which numbers over 7,000 objects. The current building has well-designed workspaces, storage for collections, art studios, a 154-seat auditorium, a museum shop, and reception and event spaces.

Designed by George Sexton Associates of Washington, D.C., the exhibition galleries occupy nearly three times more square feet than in the previous facility. One of this country's preeminent museum and exhibition design firms, George Sexton Associates has been involved in such important projects as the American Wing at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts in Norwich, England, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Denver Art Museum and the Cincinnati Art Museum. Lighting, climate-control, security and exhibition graphics are state-of-the-art in these spaces. The CMA has exhibition galleries worthy of any of this country's great museums.

 

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Cleveland Museum of Art - Cleveland-Ohio - U.S.A.

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The Cleveland Museum of Art was founded in 1913 “for the benefit of all the people forever.”¹ We strive to help the broadest possible audience understand and engage with the world’s great art while honoring the highest aesthetic, intellectual, and professional standards.
We are proud to be one of the world’s most distinguished comprehensive art museums and one of northeastern Ohio’s principal civic and cultural institutions.

Founding
The museum opened on June 6, 1916, after many years of planning. Its creation was made possible by Cleveland industrialists Hinman B. Hurlbut, John Huntington, and Horace Kelley, all of whom bequeathed money specifically for an art museum, as well as by Jeptha H. Wade II, whose Wade Park property was donated for the site. The endowments established by these founders continue to support the museum. The original neoclassic building of white Georgian marble was designed by the Cleveland firm of Hubbell & Benes and was constructed at a cost of $1.25 million. Located north of the Wade Lagoon, it forms the focus of the city’s Fine Arts Garden.

Establishing Programs for Children and Adults
Frederic Allen Whiting was the museum’s first director from 1913 to 1930. An authority on handicrafts, he believed in the museum as an educational institution. Under his leadership, the museum established the education department and a wide variety of programs for children and adults. In 1919 the first “Annual Exhibition of Cleveland Artists & Craftsmen” was held. This exhibition soon became known as the May Show, and continued to showcase local artists for 73 years.

Securing an International Reputation
William M. Milliken served as the museum’s second director from 1930 to 1958. During his tenure the museum continued to prosper, particularly during the 1940s and 1950s, when a series of large bequests, including the Rogers Bequest and the Severance Fund, allowed the purchase of significant works that established the museum’s international reputation.
Three important milestones occurred in 1958. On March 4 the first major addition doubled the size of the museum. During the year the museum also received a sizable bequest from Leonard Hanna Jr., which provided the funds necessary to function in the mainstream of national and international art collecting. Dr. Sherman Emery Lee became the museum’s third director. Lee would be known for his long tenure in the director’s role and the development of the museum’s Asian collection, which ranks as one of the finest in the country. During his directorship another wing, developed by signature architect Marcel Breuer, opened in 1971. It contained special exhibition galleries, classrooms, lecture halls, Gartner Auditorium, and the headquarters of the education department.

Expanding the Collections
In 1983 Dr. Evan Hopkins Turner became the fourth director. Another addition to the museum opened during his tenure. It contained the museum’s extensive library, as well as nine new galleries. Turner’s legacy includes the expansion of the photography and modern art collections and the reinstallation of permanent galleries. He also established the museum’s community-centered focus to ensure the institution’s relevancy to its audiences.

Enhancing Community Connections
Turner’s community-centered outlook continued under the directorship of Dr. Robert P. Bergman, who served from July 1993 until May 1999. A specialist in the art of the European Middle Ages, Dr. Bergman established community advisory committees to act as consultants for exhibitions and programs. Upon the untimely death of Dr. Bergman, deputy director Kate Sellers was appointed acting director and served from May 1999 until March 2000.

Advancing a Great Legacy
On March 13, 2000, Katharine Lee Reid, the daughter of former director Sherman Lee, became the museum’s sixth director. Her special interests included 17th-century European paintings, 20th-century painting and sculpture, and late 19th- and 20th-century American and European decorative arts. Under her tenure, ground was broken for the Rafael Viñoly-designed renovation and expansion of the entire museum complex. Mrs. Reid retired in 2005.

Building for the Future
Succeeding Katharine Lee Reid in April 2006, Timothy Rub became the seventh director of the museum. With a background in architecture and modern and contemporary art, Mr. Rub brought 20 years of museum experience to Cleveland. The museum’s renovation and expansion project continued under Mr. Rub, with the renovated 1916 Beaux-Arts building reopening in June 2008 and the new east wing in June 2009. Mr. Rub resigned as director in September 2009 to become director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Deborah Gribbon, a former director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, served as interim director until September 2010.

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Taft Museum of Art - Cincinnati-Ohio - U.S.A.

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The Baum-Longworth-Sinton-Taft House, a National Historic Landmark built about 1820 for Martin Baum, is the oldest domestic wooden structure in situ locally and is considered one of the finest examples of Federal architecture in the Palladian style in the country.

Other residents of this important villa included Nicholas Longworth, who extensively redecorated the interiors and hired African American painter Robert S. Duncanson to paint landscape murals in the foyer, now considered as one of the finest suites of domestic murals dating from before the Civil War.

After Longworth’s residency, the villa with a copper roof was purchased by David Sinton, father of museum co-founder, Anna Sinton Taft. Anna Taft lived in the mansion with her husband Charles Phelps Taft from 1873 until their respective deaths in 1931 and 1929. In 1908, Charles Phelps Taft’s half-brother, William Howard Taft accepted the nomination for U. S. president underneath the house’s portico. The Tafts bequeathed their historic home and private collection of 690 works of art to the people of Cincinnati in 1927. After extensive remodeling and updating, the Baum-Longworth-Taft House opened as the Taft Museum in 1932.

The Taft Museum of Art reopened on May 15, 2004, following a major renovation and expansion, which includes a parking garage, the Fifth Third Gallery for special exhibitions, Dater Education Room, Luther Hall performance/lecture facility, larger Museum Shop, and a Café.

Today, the Tafts’ distinguished collections are displayed in the Federal villa, which stands as one of the finest small art museums in the nation.

 

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Contemporary Arts Center - Cincinnati-Ohio - U.S.A.

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The Contemporary Arts Center impacts regional and global communities by providing changing arts experiences that challenge, entertain and educate.

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Cincinnatic Art Museum - Cincinnati-Ohio - U.S.A.

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Located in scenic Eden Park, the Cincinnati Art Museum features an unparalleled art collection of more than 65,000 works spanning 6,000 years. In addition to displaying its own broad collection, the Art Museum also hosts several national and international traveling exhibitions each year.

Visitors can enjoy the exhibitions or participate in the Art Museum’s wide range of art-related programs, activities and special events. General admission is always free for all, plus Art Museum members receive additional benefits.

The Art Museum is open six days a week, making greater Cincinnati’s most treasured cultural asset accessible to everyone.

The Cincinnati Art Museum is supported by the generosity of individuals and businesses that give annually to ArtsWave. The Ohio Arts Council helped fund the Cincinnati Art Museum with state tax dollars to encourage economic growth, educational excellence and cultural enrichment for all Ohioans. The Cincinnati Art Museum gratefully acknowledges operating support from the City of Cincinnati, as well as our members.

The Cincinnati Art Museum’s mission is to bring people and art together in ways that transform our everyday lives and our community. The Art Museum accomplishes this goal by generating exciting, thought-provoking, and memorable encounters with the artistic treasures it maintains for public benefit thus promoting the idea that art is not something that is distant or foreign but rather something that has the power to bring about subtle and complex changes in how we view our world and ourselves.

 

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The Art Institute of Chicago - Chicago-Illinois - U.S.A.

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When I became the thirteenth director of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011, the museum was very different than when I arrived here as the Chairman of the Department of Prints and Drawings in 1985. Over the past decades, the Art Institute has constantly developed and evolved, responsive to the rapid transformations of the world at large and of museums more specifically. This website is of course just one example of the museum's adaptation to changing times.

At its heart, though, the museum encourages the individual experience of works of art, the irreplaceable embodiments of the creative impulse from all times and areas. Our mission is to collect, preserve, and interpret these works of art for our 1.5 million visitors annually from around the globe. The Art Institute, founded in 1879, now has approximately 300,000 works of art in its permanent collection, stewarded by eleven curatorial departments and nearly 500 employees. This collection is housed in eight buildings—nearly one million square feet—at the heart of Chicago, one block from Lake Michigan and serving as the eastern anchor of the city's downtown. In addition to displaying the permanent collection, we host 30 special exhibitions and hundreds of gallery talks, lectures, performances, and events every year. We have one of the finest research libraries for art and architecture in the country as well as state-of-the-art conservation facilities that ensure that the art of the past carries on well into the future.

Here you'll find an introduction to the collection, activities, and character of the Art Institute. We encourage you to roam the website just as you would roam our galleries, making connections and discoveries. Welcome to the Art Institute of Chicago.

Douglas Druick
President and Eloise W. Martin Director

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Smart Museum of Art - Chicago-Illinois - U.S.A..

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“Through its holdings and its programs [the Smart] will offer countless and infinitely varied possibilities for the study of the visual arts. The discovery and the exploration of those possibilities, very much in the great tradition of experimentation and creative research which so characterizes the University of Chicago, is the task of the faculty, staff, and students now and in the future.”—Edward A. Maser, founding director of the Smart, 1974

The David and Alfred Smart Gallery was dedicated on October 22, 1974, and opened to the public the following day. The intimate modernist structure, by Chicago-born architect Edward Larrabee Barnes, was, in the words of University President Edward H. Levi, “designed to display rather than detract from the works exhibited.”

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Museum of Contemporary Art - Chicago-Illinois - U.S.A.

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One of the nation’s largest facilities devoted to the art of our time, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago offers exhibitions of the most thought-provoking art created since 1945. MCA Chicago documents contemporary visual culture through painting, sculpture, photography, video and film, and performance. Located in the heart of downtown Chicago, the MCA boasts a gift store, bookstore, restaurant, 300-seat theater, and a terraced sculpture garden with a panoramic view of Lake Michigan.

The mission of the MCA is to be an innovative and compelling center of contemporary art where the public can directly experience the work and ideas of living artists, and understand the historical, social, and cultural context of the art of our time.

The Museum boldly interweaves exhibitions, performances, collections, and educational programs to excite, challenge, and illuminate our visitors and to provide insight into the creative process.

The MCA aspires to engage a broad and diverse audience, create a sense of community and be a place for contemplation, stimulation, and discussion about contemporary art and culture.

 

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LUMA - Chicago-Illinois - U.S.A .

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The Loyola University Museum of Art is dedicated to exploring, promoting, and understanding art and artistic expression that illuminates the enduring spiritual questions of all cultures and societies. The Loyola University Museum of Art reflects the University’s Jesuit identity and is dedicated to helping people of all creeds to explore their faith and spiritual quest.

The Museum interprets and displays the University’s medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque collection, known as the Martin D’Arcy, S.J. Collection, other museum permanent collections, and rotating exhibitions.

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The Mint Museum - Charlotte-North Carolina - U.S.A.

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As the oldest art museum in North Carolina, and the art museum with one of the largest collections in the Southeast, The Mint Museum offers it's visitors inspiring and transformative experiences through art from around the world via innovative collections, ground-breaking exhibitions, riveting educational programs, and profound scholarship. The Mint Museum is a non-profit, visual arts institution comprised of two dynamic Facilities: Mint Museum Uptown and Mint Museum Randolph.

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Gibbes Museum of Art - Charleston-South Carolina - U.S.A .

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The Gibbes Museum of Art is temporarily closed for renovations and will reopen in the spring of 2016. Check the Renovation website at www.gibbesmuseum.org/renovation for news, images, updates, and opportunities to support the museum.

During the renovation the Gibbes Museum of Art will continue to engage the community in the arts with a variety of programs, special events, and educational offering including our Insider Art Series. Check the calendar for more information about opportunities to engage with art while the museum is closed.

The Gibbes Museum of Art preserves and promotes the art of Charleston and the American South by collecting, researching, maintaining and publicizing its collections, creating innovative exhibitions, and developing interpretive and educational programs.

 

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Ackland Art Museum - Chapell Hill-North Carolina - U.S.A.

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Since 1958, The Ackland Art Museum has been one of North Carolina’s most important cultural resources.

The Ackland Art Museum serves broad local, state, and national constituencies as a unit of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The Museum’s permanent collection consists of more than 17,000 works of art, featuring North Carolina’s premier collections of Asian art and works of art on
paper (drawings, prints, and photographs), as well as significant collections of European masterworks, twentieth-century and contemporary art, African art, and North Carolina pottery. The Ackland organizes more than a dozen special exhibitions a year.

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Krannert Art Museum - Champaign-Illinois - U.S.A.

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KAM is the second largest general fine art museum in the state of Illinois and houses the University of Illinois art collection. The museum partners with the School of Art and Design and operates within the College of Fine and Applied Arts.
There are many ways to learn more about the museum:

• Get to know the museum's history and mission.
• Take the time to see the highlights of our permanent art collection.
• Plan to tour our current exhibitions.
• Get information on hours, parking, and directions.
• Plan a museum tour.

As you plan your visit, please know that Krannert Art Museum's exhibitions and events are always free to the public.

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Harvard Art Museums - Cambridge-Massachusetts - U.S.A.

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Ever since their founding, the Harvard Art Museums—the Fogg Museum, Busch-Reisinger Museum, and Arthur M. Sackler Museum—have been dedicated to advancing and supporting learning at Harvard University, in the local community, and around the world. The museums have played a leading role in the development of art history, conservation, and conservation science, and in the evolution of the art museum as an institution.Through research, teaching, professional training, and public education, the museums strive to advance the understanding and appreciation of art. Programs encourage close looking at original works of art, collaboration with campus and community partners, and the production of new scholarship.

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Fleming Museum - Burlington - Vermont - U.S.A.

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Since its opening in 1931, the Fleming Museum has brought world-class art and diverse visual culture to the people of northern New England. With a collection of 25,000 objects from cultures worldwide and nine special exhibitions annually, the Museum attracts visitors of all ages from throughout the region. Tourists from around the world who visit Vermont for its natural beauty are delighted to find a thriving cultural scene unfolding between the Green Mountains and the shores of Lake Champlain.

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Albright-Knox Art Gallery - Buffalo-NY - U.S.A.

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The Albright-Knox Art Gallery is dedicated to enhancing the understanding and appreciation of contemporary and modern art. As a hub of artistic and cultural energies, it strives to be an inspiring educational resource for all audiences.

Founded officially in December 1862, The Buffalo Fine Arts Academy—the governing body of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery—is among the country's oldest public arts institutions in the United States

Since its inception as The Buffalo Fine Arts Academy in 1862, the museum has been dedicated to acquiring, exhibiting, and preserving modern and contemporary art, with a particular emphasis on the collection, presentation, and interpretation of the artistic expressions of our times.

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Bowdoin College Museum of Art - Brunswick-Maine - U.S.A.

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The Bowdoin College Museum of Art, the cornerstone of the arts and culture at Bowdoin, was recently renovated and expanded to better house and display its renowned collection. One of the earliest collegiate art collections in the nation, it came into being through the 1811 bequest of James Bowdoin III of seventy European paintings and a portfolio of 140 master drawings. Over the years, the collection has been expanded through the generosity of the Bowdoin family, alumni, and friends, and now numbers more than 20,000 objects, including paintings, sculpture, works on paper, decorative arts, and artifacts from prehistory to the present from civilizations around the world.

The Museum’s landmark Walker Art Building was commissioned for the College by Harriet and Sophia Walker in honor of their uncle, a Boston businessman who had supported the creation of the first small art gallery at Bowdoin in the mid-nineteenth century. The Walker sisters, encyclopedic collectors and supporters of art education, stipulated that the building be used exclusively for art purposes. Designed by Charles Follen McKim of McKim, Mead, and White, the building was completed in 1894 and is on the National Register of Historic Places. Its brick, limestone, and granite façade is based on Renaissance prototypes, with a dramatically shadowed loggia flanked by large lion sculptures upon which generations of Brunswick children have been photographed.

The antiquities collections contain over 1,800 Assyrian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine objects and constitute one of the most comprehensive compilations of ancient art in any small college museum. European art includes paintings, illustrated manuscripts, sculptures, and decorative arts. Among twelve European Renaissance and Baroque paintings given in 1961 by the Kress Foundation is a panel depicting nymphs pursued by a youth that recently has been attributed to the young Fra Angelico. The works on paper collections of prints, drawings, and photographs is large and varied, numbering more than 8,000 works and representing artists from Rembrandt and Rubens through Callot, Goya, and Manet to Picasso and Warhol.

The Museum’s American collection includes an important grouping of colonial and Federal portraits, with, for example, seven major paintings by Gilbert Stuart, including the famous presidential portraits of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, together with other works by Robert Feke, John Copley, Thomas Sully, and Joseph Blackburn. Among other notable works are the murals commissioned by McKim to decorate the Museum’s rotunda by the four leading painters of the American Renaissance: Elihu Vedder, Kenyon Cox, Abbott Thayer, and John LaFarge. The collection also includes works by significant nineteenth- and twentieth-century artists such as Mary Cassatt, Thomas Eakins, John Sloan, Rockwell Kent, Marsden Hartley, and Andrew Wyeth, and an archive of memorabilia from Winslow Homer’s Maine studio.

Non-western materials range from Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Southeast Asian prints, ink paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts to modest but distinguished holdings of African, Pacific, Pre-Columbian, and Native American artifacts.
The recent renovation expanded galleries and a seminar room, and improved art storage facilities. The restored Museum retains the building’s iconic architectural features and provides state-of-the-art climate control and mechanical systems. A new, dramatic glass and bronze entry pavilion houses a glass elevator and “floating” steel staircase, while a rear addition to the building features an expansive glass curtain wall behind which the Museum has installed its five celebrated ancient Assyrian relief sculptures.

The Museum, open to the public at no charge, is a teaching facility, with the core of its mission to keep its rich collections within immediate reach of Bowdoin students, faculty, scholars, and art lovers. Its active emphasis on the study of original objects as an integral part of the Bowdoin curriculum makes the Museum the ultimate cross-disciplinary and multicultural enterprise. Although online resources are no substitute for an actual visit, the collections can be searched and information on Museum programs and publications found on this website.

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South Dakota Art Museum - Brookings-South Dakota - U.S.A.

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Since 1970, the South Dakota Art Museum in Brookings has been a place for people around the world to enjoy the artistic legacy of South Dakota in all its diversity. Rotating exhibits feature Harvey Dunn, Native American art, Marghab Linens and Paul Goble; as well as exhibits curated from regional, national and international artists.

The museum has more than 7,000 objects in its collection including paintings, drawings, photographs, sculptures, textiles, and ceramics. The museum store features jewelry, pottery, and original works of art by local and regional artists in addition to books on South Dakota history and culture.

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Boise Art Museum - Boise - Idaho - U.S.A.

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Mission
The mission of the Boise Art Museum is to create visual arts experiences, engage people, and inspire learning through exceptional exhibitions, collections, and educational opportunities.

Vision
The Boise Art Museum is nationally recognized for leadership, innovation and excellence in the visual arts.

History
Boise Art Museum is a 501(c)(3) non–profit, educational and charitable organization. The mission of the Museum is to create visual arts experiences, engage people, and inspire learning through exceptional exhibitions, collections, and educational opportunities.
In 1931, a group of thirty citizens interested in promoting art in the city of Boise and throughout Idaho met in the Crystal Lounge of the Hotel Boise and became known as the Boise Art Association. The purpose of the association was to organize, acquire, and maintain a suitable gallery in which works of art could be displayed.
Boise Art Museum (BAM) began in 1937, when the Association’s goals were realized through a partnership among the Boise Art Association, the City of Boise and the federal Works Progress Administration. What was then known as The Boise Gallery of Art was constructed in Julia Davis Park in the heart of downtown Boise. Although the gallery did not actively collect, it presented local and regional artwork and played an important role in Boise’s growing community.
In 1961, the Boise Art Association incorporated as a non-profit organization under the name Boise Gallery of Art. In the mid-sixties, the first professional staff members were hired and exhibition programming became more ambitious. The need for additional space quickly became a priority, and in 1972, construction began on a year-long expansion program. The building, which encompassed more than 10,000 square feet, re-opened to the public in 1973.
In 1986, the institution successfully completed a fundraising campaign to support a second renovation for expansion of its galleries as well as the establishment of an Endowment Fund. Upon completion of the expansion in 1988, the organization was renamed Boise Art Museum to reflect its focus on developing its Permanent Collection and education programs as well as the display of significant traveling exhibitions. At that time, the Boise Art Museum was awarded initial national accreditation by the American Association of Museums, with subsequent re-accreditation awarded in 1996 and 2007.
In 1997, BAM embarked upon a multi-million dollar campaign, supported by the City of Boise and the community, to increase its facilities by 13,800 square feet to a total of 34,800 square feet. The Museum added a Sculpture Court, a new Education Wing with expanded studios, an ARTexperienceGallery, more space in the Museum Store, new galleries to feature the Permanent Collection, larger office space, and additional areas for art storage and conservation.
BAM is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), certifying that the Museum meets or exceeds national standards in all areas of its operations. BAM is the only collecting art museum in Idaho to hold AAM accreditation and is among 4% of museums nationwide that have earned this distinction.
BAM is embracing its 75th anniversary as an opportunity to enhance and ensure a rewarding experience for all visitors through exhibitions, collections, interpretive strategies, educational programming, a welcoming environment, and a commitment to being a vital part of the educational and cultural life of the community.

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Museum of Fine Arts - Boston - Massachusetts - USA

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The original MFA opened its doors to the public on July 4, 1876, the nation’s centennial. Built in Copley Square, the MFA was then home to 5,600 works of art. Over the next several years, the collection and number of visitors grew exponentially, and in 1909 the Museum moved to its current home on Huntington Avenue.

Today the MFA is one of the most comprehensive art museums in the world; the collection encompasses nearly 450,000 works of art. We welcome more than one million visitors each year to experience art from ancient Egyptian to contemporary, special exhibitions, and innovative educational programs.

The Museum has undergone significant expansion and change in recent years; 2010 marked the opening of the Art of the Americas Wing, with four levels of American art from ancient to modern. In 2011, the west wing of the Museum was transformed into the Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art, with new galleries for contemporary art and social and learning spaces. Improved and new galleries for European, Asian, and African art have opened through 2013, with more to come.

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