Huntsville Museum of Art
The Huntsville Museum of Art is an art museum in Huntsville . It was founded on August 13, 1970 and had its first exhibition in 1973. The permanent exhibition in its own museum building was opened in March 1975. The collection includes 2,300 works, mostly by American and regional artists. The Huntsville Museum of Art also owns works of art from Asia, Africa and Europe that have influenced American art.
history
The museum was founded on August 13, 1970 when the city established the governing body of the Museum Board of the City of Huntsville. In 1973 the first director was appointed and the first exhibition was held in a city building. The following year, the museum received a temporary office and exhibition spaces on the campus of the University of Alabama in Huntsville . The museum's own building, which was built as a wing of the Von Braun Civic Center , opened in March 1975. In 1980, the Huntsville Museum of Art received accreditation from the American Association of Museums . The museum building received an extension in 1982.
At the beginning of the 1990s, the previous building became too small, so that a new one was planned in Big Spring International Park in the heart of Huntsville. The city donated four million dollars. There was also $ 3.4 million raised in a fundraising campaign. A local architecture firm was then commissioned to plan the new museum building.
The opening of the new museum building took place in March 1998. Over 8,000 people visited the museum on the opening weekend. Since the move, the museum's exhibition activity has increased significantly. In January 2006 the extension Plaza in the Park was completed, with which the museum shop, the restaurants and the classrooms were regrouped and moved further into the park.
collection
The collection includes around 2,300 works of art. They are divided into two main areas of the collection: on the one hand, art by American and regional artists, and on the other, art from Asia, Africa and Europe that influenced these artists. The growth of the collection was supported by donations and foundations.
In the collection, visitors can see graphic works by James McNeill Whistler , John French Sloan , Joseph Stella , Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol . Examples of artists with roots in Alabama with works in the Huntsville Museum of Art's collection include Richmond Burton , Nall Hollis , David Parrish, and Stephen Rolfe Powell . There is also the Southern photography collection , in which over 200 works can be seen so far, most of which were acquired directly at exhibitions in the museum. The museum has also acquired works of particular importance to Huntsville and its scientific community. For example, a group of watercolor pictures of Huntsville and the Marshall Space Flight Center by Renato Moncini , who worked for NASA as an illustrator in the Apollo program . Another work of art acquired in this context is Andy Warhol's Moonwalk . There are also European and Japanese prints, Chinese glass objects and African sculptures to be seen. Notable is the world's largest collection of silver-made animal figurines made by the Italian jewelry company Buccellati and owned by the Huntsville Museum of Art.
Special exhibitions
The special exhibitions have different thematic focuses. Exhibitions are organized that illuminate a certain part or aspect of one's own collection. On the other hand, the work of individual artists is viewed, as in the exhibitions Encounters: Lilian Garcia-Roig , which presents the work of the artist from Florida, and Encounters: Shane Fero , in which works by the glass artist were shown. In addition, larger exhibitions such as When They Were Young: Aristocratic Children in European Portraiture , which runs from November 2008 to January 2009, are shown, which have a special art genre, a style or an era as their theme.
Web links
- Official website (English)
Coordinates: 34 ° 43 '37.6 " N , 86 ° 35' 14.1" W.