Birmingham Museum of Art

The Birmingham Museum of Art is Birmingham's public art museum, located north of Linn Park at 2000 [8th Avenue North]] downtown. It is currently the largest municipal art museum in the Southeastern United States and tentative plans have been suggested for it to expand onto the site currently occupied by Boutwell Auditorium. The museums collection encompasses more than 21,000 objects from all periods of artistic production and in all media. Particular strengths of the collection are in decorative arts (particularly German cast-iron and Wedgwood objects) and Asian art. The museum provides year-round educational activities for the public and hosts frequent touring and special exhibitions.

History

Birmingham Art Club

The roots of the museum date back to 1908 and the founding of the Birmingham Art Club which endeavored to amass a public art collection for the benefit of the citizens of Birmingham. In 1927 they were able to display their collection in the galleries of the new Birmingham Public Library. This gallery hosted a touring exhibition of Italian Renaissance panels from the Samuel H. Kress Collection, two of which remained in Birmingham on long-term loan. Two years later, the club deposited a $19,000 bequest which was made to help fund a permanent home for the museum. Over the next two decades the club continued to add to the collection and raise support in the press and in City Hall for the concept of a new building.

Opening Exhibition

In September 1950 a governing board was created to oversee the creation of a museum as "an institution of public service, educational and recreational, with all the people welcome." The following February the board hired Richard Foster Howard to serve as the first museum director. In April 1951 the newly-established "Birmingham Museum of Art" presented a public "Opening Exhibition," housed in five unused rooms in City Hall which were provided to the club by the City Commission. The exhibition included some pieces from the existing Art Club collection as well as a large number of loaned works from museums across the Eastern half of the United States. The result was considered to be "the finest showing of great objects of art in the South to date." Howard's wife,

Early acquisitions

The publicity created by the exhibition led to several important gifts, notably of Chinese ceramics and textiles, Japanese prints, Old Master prints, costumes, glass and oil paintings. In 1952 the Kress Foundation presented 29 paintings from the Italian Renaissance as a long-term loan to the new museum, forming the core of the collection of European paintings. In 1954 Jacob Wells made a large bequest in memory of her husband Oscar Wells to make possible the new museum building. Land was purchased the next year and, the board continued to enlarge the collection. A significant additions was the Rasmussen Collection of art from the Plains and Northwest Indians. Within a year or two a design commission for a new museum building was given to the office of Warren Knight and Davis and, in 1958 Colonel William Rushton and museum director Howard, holding a chrome-plated shovel and an ancient wooden Egyptian agricultural implement, respectively, broke ground for the new building.

New building

The Oscar Wells Memorial Building opened to the public on May 3, 1959. A sculpture garden to the rear of the building was also opened, installed by the Red Mountain Garden Club to designs by William Kessler. In the following years the Kress Foundation made two important gifts to the museum, the trusteeship of a collection of Renaissance furniture and decorative objects in 1959, and the deed to the Italian paintings already on loan, along with 8 additional works from the same period. The following year, American Cast Iron Pipe Company (ACIPCO) loaned its Lamprecht Collection of German cast-iron objects (the largest in the world). In 1963 Dr & Mrs Harold Simon began donating from their collection of Western Art and 19th Century American paintings and the next year the museum board purchased a collection of gold implements from pre-Columbian Peru. That year also saw the inception of the "Museum Art Education Council" (Now the Birmingham Museum of Art Education Department) which began offering slideshows in art history, classes and workshops to school classrooms and to the public.

Expansions

In 1965 a new wing of upper floor galleries was added to the building's west wing. The following year an art library was opened in the building. The MAEC instituted an "Artmobile" program to reach out to public schools in 1966 and in 1967 a new East wing was completed. The ongoing expansion of the museum had nearly exhausted its landholdings, so in 1968 the city issued bonds for the purchase of additional property, which was completed in 1969. In the 1970s the museum focussed on filling gaps in the collection, especially on increasing patronage of contemporary artists. At the same time the Asian art collection continued to grow into what is now the largest collection of its type in the Southeast. An Asian Art Society is established to support the collection. In 1973 R. Hugh Daniel provided an endowed directorship position. The next year another addition to the building was completed with a three-story rebuilding of the east wing, adding an auditorium and storage and office areas along with exhibition galleries. In 1978 the first gifts from the Dwight and Lucille Beeson Collection were received, creating what is now the largest such collection outside of England. In 1979 further reworking of the east wing adds a conservation lab, loading dock, and second public entrance to the building. In 1980 gallery space is expanded by 28,000 square feet, creating a total of 116,000 square feet of exhibit space, the most of any museum in the Southeast.

Institutionalization

In the 1980s several facets of the museums operations were shored up. An endowment fund for acquisitions was created in 1980. The costume collection is enhanced by a gift from Fasion Group International while another collection of textiles from Coleman Cooper adds important pieces to several museum collections. In 1984 the museum begins acquiring African artworks, now one of the most important collections in the region. A blockbuster exhibition in 1985 of the Armand Hammer Collection heralds an era of large crowd-drawing events. In 1986 another expansion project is planned and architect Edward Larrabee Barnes is selected to oversee the designs. Part of the program is provision for a new outdoor sculpture garden. $5 million is earmarked for the museum's $21 million project from a 1989 bond issue and ground is broken in 1991. Before it reopens, the museum is given a large collection of 18th century French paintings and decorative objects by Eugenia Woodward Hitt. The board also purchases a library of rare volumes on 19th century English ceramics and material culture to complement the research potential of the Beeson collection.

Reopening

In 1993 the Birmingham Museum of Art reopened with a new multi-level sculpture garden and a new graphic identity. A new endowment for museum operations is established in 1995 and the museum accepts an important gift of 300 Alabama-made quilts from the Cargo collection. In 1996 the museum hosted an exhibit of artifacts from the tomb of Emperor Qin, coinciding with the tourist bonanza of the 1996 Olympic Games. The year 2000 saw the gift of the William Hansell and Susan Mabry Hulsey collection and a fiftieth anniversary exhibit of Matisses from the Baltimore Museum of Art. Over the next year the museum produces a new website and a comprehensive audio-guide to the permanent collection. The Decorative Art and Asian Art collections both receive endowed curatorships and a concert series is establishes. Five of the galleries, the Native American, Contemporary, Kress, American, and Korean galleries, are completely reinstalled with an inclusive arrangement of fine and decorative arts from the respective milieus of each period.

References

• Howard, Helen Boswell and Richard Foster Howard. (April 1951). Catalogue of the Opening Exhibition. Birmingham Museum of Art: Birmingham, Alabama. April 8 through June 3, 1951.