Birmingham Museum of Art

The Birmingham Museum of Art is an art museum in Birmingham, Alabama. It was founded in 1951 and located in the city center. The museum's collection includes more than 17,000 works and objects that come from very different cultures and eras. In addition, the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Clarence B. Hanson, Jr. Library is home to belong to the more than 35,000 volumes, especially with respect to the collection of the museum.

History

The Birmingham Museum of Art dates back to 1908, founded Birmingham Art Club, who had taken on the task to promote the culture in the young city. The club collected works of art and put this also in a gallery. When her collection continued to grow, efforts have been made to found a museum. This happened in 1951 with the founding of the Birmingham Museum of Art The present museum building, which was designed by the architectural firm Warren Birmingham, Knight & Davis, was built in 1959. In the following years several extensions of the museum were designed by the same architects. 1993 The building was renovated and expanded according to plans by the New York architect Edward Larrabee, so now 180,000 square meters of exhibition space are available. In addition, a new sculpture garden was created.

The Museum is supported by the city and private donors, so that except for some special exhibitions it does not require any entrance fees from visitors.

Collection

The collection of African Art focuses on Sub-Saharan Africa south of the Sahara. The oldest object of this part of the collection dates from the 12th century. The visitor gets to see, especially sculptures and ritual objects, but also metal art, ceramics and textiles. The Department of American Art shows mainly paintings and sculptures from 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 honored by the National Endowment for the Humanities as one of the 40 paintings, people, places, and events in American history represent the best. In addition, objects from the Tiffany manufactory and Frank Lloyd Wright are seen.

The collection of Asian art goes back to a donation of Chinese textiles in 1951. Since then she has been supplemented by objects from China, Korea, Japan, India and Southeast Asia and is now one of the most extensive and important collections of its kind in the southeastern United States. The collection of Vietnamese ceramics objects is the most important in the United States. Similarly, from the Smithsonian Institution as a permanent loan to the Birmingham Museum of Art has passed Vetlesen Jade Collection with jade objects dating from the 16th to the 19th century nation-wide importance.

Works in the collection of European art, for example, come from the 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 French painting of the 19th century are works by Camille Corot and Gustave Courbet.

Special

The special exhibitions at the Birmingham Museum of Art, deal with various aspects of art. So in 2008 found, among other things, the exhibition Leonardo da Vinci: Drawings from the Biblioteca Reale in Turin, showing a significant group of drawings by the artist, and Vanishing World: Art and Ritual in Amazonia, in with the culture of the indigenous peoples Amazonia busy. The German Ceramics from the 1950s or modern Korean prints by the artist Kim Sangku in Contemporary Korean Prints: In addition, for example, German ceramic products in the exhibition A new twist to Kim Sangku shown.

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