Birmingham Museum of Art
The Birmingham Museum of Art is an art museum in Birmingham , Alabama . It was founded in 1951 and is located in the city center. The museum's collection includes more than 17,000 works and objects from a wide variety of cultures and eras. The Birmingham Museum of Art is also home to the Clarence B. Hanson Jr. Library, which includes over 35,000 volumes, primarily related to the museum's collection.
history
The museum goes back to the Birmingham Art Club, founded in 1908, which had set itself the task of promoting culture in the young city. The club collected works of art and exhibited them in a gallery. As their collection continued to grow, efforts were made to found a museum. This happened in 1951 with the establishment of the Birmingham Museum of Art. The present museum building, which had been designed by Birmingham architects Warren, Knight & Davis , was built in 1959. In the period that followed, several extensions to the museum were designed by the same architecture firm. In 1993 the building was renovated and expanded according to plans by the New York architect Edward Larrabee , so that 180,000 square meters of exhibition space are now available. A new sculpture garden was also created.
The museum is supported by the city and private sponsors, so that, apart from a few special exhibitions, it does not require any entrance fees from visitors.
collection
The Birmingham Museum of Art's collection includes over 17,000 works and objects, including paintings , sculptures , decorative arts, drawings , graphics and videos . The collection is divided into the departments African Art , American Art, Asian Art, Contemporary Art , Decorative Art, European Art, Native American Art and Pre-Columbian Art.
The collection of African art focuses on sub-Saharan Africa south of the Sahara . The oldest object in this part of the collection dates from the 12th century. The visitor mainly gets to see sculptures and ritual objects, but also metal works of art, ceramics and textiles. The American Art Department primarily exhibits paintings and sculptures since the 18th century, including paintings by Mary Cassatt , John Singer Sargent, and Gilbert Stuart , as well as sculptures by Frederic Remington . The painting Looking down Yosemite Valley, California by Albert Bierstadt was organized by the Foundation National Endowment for the Humanities named one of the 40 paintings that represent people, places and events in American history best. Objects from the Tiffany Manufactory and Frank Lloyd Wright can also be seen.
The Asian Art Collection goes back to a donation of Chinese textiles in 1951. Since then it has been supplemented by objects from China, Korea, Japan, India and Southeast Asia and is now one of the largest and most important collections of its kind in the southeastern United States. The collection of Vietnamese ceramic objects is the most important in the United States. Likewise, the Vetlesen Jade Collection with jade objects from the 16th to the 19th century , which the Smithsonian Institution has given to the Birmingham Museum of Art on permanent loan, is of nationwide importance.
Works in the collection of European art come, for example, from Renaissance artists such as Pietro Perugino or the Baroque painters Balthasar van der Ast , Giovanni Antonio Canal , Jean-Baptiste Oudry and Jacob van Ruisdael . Examples of 19th century French painting are works by Camille Corot and Gustave Courbet .
Special exhibitions
The special exhibitions deal with various aspects of art. In 2008, for example, the exhibition Leonardo da Vinci : Drawings from the Biblioteca Reale in Turin , which shows an important group of drawings by the artist, and Vanishing World: Art and Ritual in Amazonia , which deals with the culture of the indigenous peoples in Amazonia busy. In addition, for example, German ceramic products are shown in the exhibition A new Twist: The German Ceramics from the 1950s or modern Korean prints by the artist Kim Sangku in Contemporary Korean Prints: Kim Sangku .
literature
- Masterpieces East & West from the collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art . Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham Alabama 1993. ISBN 0-931394-38-4
Web links
- Birmingham Museum of Art (English)
Coordinates: 33 ° 31 ′ 18.8 ″ N , 86 ° 48 ′ 36.7 ″ W.