Palm Springs Art Museum

Last updated
Palm Springs Art Museum (PSAM)
The Palm Springs Art Museum, formerly the Palm Springs Desert Museum, in Palm Springs, California LCCN2013631275.tif
Main location in Palm Springs
USA California location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Location within California
Former name
Palm Springs Desert Museum
Established1938 (1938)
LocationPSAM (main)
101 Museum Drive,
Palm Springs, CA, 92262

Architecture & Design Center
300 S. Palm Canyon
Palm Springs, CA

Faye Sarkowsky Sculpture Garden
72-567 Highway 111,
Palm Desert, California 92260
Coordinates 33°49′27″N116°33′00″W / 33.82417°N 116.55000°W / 33.82417; -116.55000
TypeVisual and performing arts
Accreditation American Alliance of Museums
Collection size≈ 24,000 objects
DirectorAdam Lerner
Architect E. Stewart Williams
Public transit access SunLine Transit Agency
Palm Springs: Routes 111, 14, 24, 30, 32
Palm Desert: Routes 111, 32, 50
Website http://www.psmuseum.org/

The Palm Springs Art Museum (formerly the Palm Springs Desert Museum) is a visual and performing arts institution with several locations in the Coachella Valley, in Riverside County, California, United States, founded in 1938. PSAM has been focused on design and contemporary art since 2004. [1] PSAM houses an art museum and an Architecture and Design Center in Palm Springs, California, along with the Faye Sarkowsky Sculpture Garden at a satellite location in Palm Desert.

Contents

History

Desert Museum years

The Palm Springs Desert Museum originated in 1938 in La Plaza Arcade, a gathering place for residents, on Palm Canyon Drive near in central Palm Springs. The early museum focused on the Colorado Desert and the Cahuilla and other Indigenous Americans. The museum grew and was temporarily relocated within a section of the town's library. During World War II, the museum was operated by biologist T. D. A. Cockerell. In 1947, the museum was moved into a section of a converted wartime hospital. Folk singer and marine biologist Sam Hinton served as director from 1942 to 1944. The Desert Museum focused on natural science and Indigenous American collections and programs. In 1952, the museum added a desert wildlife reserve habitat and a botanical garden.

Art museum

The Desert Museum started to transition to an art museum in 1953 when desert landscape paintings by Carl Eytel were donated by Cornelia White, Isabel Chase, and Earl Coffman. [2] A 10,000-square-foot (930 m2) structure was built for the Art Museum in downtown Palm Springs in 1958. In 1962, the museum added an auditorium and more gallery space to house contemporary art exhibitions. The executive director, [3] anthropologist Frederick Sleight [4] was credited with guiding the transformation. [5]

Architect E. Stewart Williams designed a 75,000-square-foot (7,000 m2) building in the Modernist architectural style for the third location of the museum. When the art museum was established, the desert wildlife reserve museum component became the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens, an independent public institution. The Williams-designed building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016.

In 2003, the museum experienced financial difficulty, following debt incurred during its 1990s expansion phase. That year, retired banker Harold J. Meyerman joined the museum board; he became its chairman in 2006 and served until his death in 2015. Under Meyerman, the museum pursued financial stability through steps such as increasing its endowment from $6 million to $15.5 million, reducing staff, and raising fees for local groups using the museum's facilities. [6] [7] [8]

Museum scope

Palm Springs Art Museum, 2021 Palm Springs Art Museum interior - 3.jpg
Palm Springs Art Museum, 2021

Emphases of the Palm Springs Art Museum developed into three areas:

Educational programs related to each of the three disciplines were planned, and the new Palm Springs Desert Museum opened to the public in January 1976. The museum expanded again in 1982 with the addition of the Denney Western American Art Wing, the museum was renamed the Palm Springs Art Museum, and classic American western art was added to the collection's fine art emphasis.

Art and natural science

The permanent collection consists of more than 24,000 objects. [9] 12,000 objects include fine art, fine art photography, photographic archives, Native American art, Mesoamerican art and artifacts from other cultures. The natural science collections are categorized in geology, biology and archaeology. 12,000 specimens include ceramics, lithics, tools, weapons, minerals, fossils, rocks, casts of fossils, herbaria, mounted invertebrates, preserved amphibians and reptiles, study skins and whole mounts of birds and mammals.

Notable artists

Noted landscape artists with works displayed or curated by the museum include: [2]

Performing arts

The intimate 437-seat Annenberg Theater presents internationally known performers and concert artists in music, dance and theater.

Growth and accreditation

Palm Springs Art Museum, 2021 Palm Springs Art Museum interior - 2.jpg
Palm Springs Art Museum, 2021

The museum received accreditation [10] from the American Alliance of Museums in 1982.

The museum building had originally been designed with the possibility of adding a third level. The need for more exhibition space and educational facilities was recognized by the Board of Trustees, noting increased population and tourism in the Coachella Valley, in addition to the museum's growing collection. An expansion project was initiated with a gift of $1.5 million seed money and a donation of 132 artworks from the personal collection of designer and collector Steve Chase.

The Steve Chase Art Wing and Education Center, also designed by E. Stewart Williams, opened in November 1996. The expansion included 25,000 additional square feet of gallery space, a mezzanine, a sculpture terrace, four classrooms, two art storage vaults, and a 90-seat lecture hall. The Palm Springs Museum complex grew to encompass 124,435 square feet (11,560.4 m2), with additional exhibition space in Palm Desert as of March 2012.

Palm Springs Art Museum in Palm Desert

On March 15, 2012, the museum opened a satellite facility in the nearby community of Palm Desert, California. [11] The inaugural exhibition was "Rodin to Now", a survey of modern sculpture from the French sculptor Auguste Rodin. Contemporary artists whose works have been displayed at the Palm Springs Art Museum in Palm Desert include Tracey Emin, Anthony Gormley, Lino Tagliapietra, Klaus Moje, Richard Marquis, Karen LaMonte and Jennifer Steinkamp. [12]

Architecture and Design Center

In 2011, the museum purchased the Santa Fe Federal Savings & Loan building, also a Palm Springs building designed by the architect E. Stewart Williams in 1961. [13] PSAM converted the building into exhibition space and opened it to the public as the Architecture and Design Center, Edwards Harris Pavilion, in 2014. The opening exhibition showed the desert modern style work of Williams. [13] The building was renovated for PSAM by the Marmol Radziner architecture firm of Los Angeles. [14]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">San Francisco Museum of Modern Art</span> Modern and contemporary art museum in San Francisco, California (SFMOMA)

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art. The museum's current collection includes over 33,000 works of painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, design, and media arts, and moving into the 21st century. The collection is displayed in 170,000 square feet (16,000 m2) of exhibition space, making the museum one of the largest in the United States overall, and one of the largest in the world for modern and contemporary art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Gallery of Art</span> National art museum in Washington, D.C., United States

The National Gallery of Art is an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in 1937 for the American people by a joint resolution of the United States Congress. Andrew W. Mellon donated a substantial art collection and funds for construction. The core collection includes major works of art donated by Paul Mellon, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, Lessing J. Rosenwald, Samuel Henry Kress, Rush Harrison Kress, Peter Arrell Browne Widener, Joseph E. Widener, and Chester Dale. The Gallery's collection of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, medals, and decorative arts traces the development of Western art from the Middle Ages to the present, including the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the Americas and the largest mobile created by Alexander Calder.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum</span> Art museum in Boston, MA, US (opened 1903)

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts, which houses significant examples of European, Asian, and American art. Its collection includes paintings, sculpture, tapestries, and decorative arts. It was founded by Isabella Stewart Gardner, whose will called for her art collection to be permanently exhibited "for the education and enjoyment of the public forever."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philadelphia Museum of Art</span> Art museum in Pennsylvania, United States

The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway at Eakins Oval. The museum administers collections containing over 240,000 objects including major holdings of European, American and Asian origin. The various classes of artwork include sculpture, paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, armor, and decorative arts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden</span> Art museum in Washington, D.C., U.S.

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was designed by architect Gordon Bunshaft and is part of the Smithsonian Institution. It was conceived as the United States' museum of contemporary and modern art and currently focuses its collection-building and exhibition-planning mainly on the post–World War II period, with particular emphasis on art made during the last 50 years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">High Museum of Art</span> Art museum in Atlanta, Georgia

The High Museum of Art is the largest museum for visual art in the Southeastern United States. Located in Atlanta, Georgia, the High is 312,000 square feet and a division of the Woodruff Arts Center.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nasher Sculpture Center</span> Museum in Dallas, USA

Opened in 2003, the Nasher Sculpture Center is a museum in Dallas, Texas, that houses the Patsy and Raymond Nasher collection of modern and contemporary sculpture. It is located on a 2.4-acre (9,700 m2) site adjacent to the Dallas Museum of Art in the Dallas Arts District.

Emerson Stewart Williams, FAIA was a prolific Palm Springs, California-based architect whose distinctive modernist buildings, in the Mid-century modern style, significantly shaped the Coachella Valley's architectural landscape and legacy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mid-century modern</span> Architectural, interior, product, and graphic design of the mid-20th century

Mid-century modern (MCM) is a movement in interior design, product design, graphic design, architecture and urban development that was popular in the United States and Europe from roughly 1945 to 1969, during the United States's post–World War II period. The term was used descriptively as early as the mid-1950s and was defined as a design movement by Cara Greenberg in her 1984 book Mid-Century Modern: Furniture of the 1950s. It is now recognized by scholars and museums worldwide as a significant design movement. The MCM design aesthetic is modern in style and construction, aligned with the Modernist movement of the period. It is typically characterized by clean, simple lines and honest use of materials, and it generally does not include decorative embellishments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Art Gallery of Alberta</span> Art museum in Edmonton, Alberta

The Art Gallery of Alberta (AGA) is an art museum in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The museum occupies an 8,000 square metres (86,000 sq ft) building at Churchill Square in downtown Edmonton. The museum building was originally designed by Donald G. Bittorf, and B. James Wensley, although portions of that structure were demolished or built over during a redevelopment of the building by Randall Stout.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Birmingham Museum of Art</span> Municipal art museum in Alabama, US

The Birmingham Museum of Art is a museum in Birmingham, Alabama. Its collection includes more than 24,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, and decorative arts representing various cultures, including Asian, European, American, African, Pre-Columbian, and Native American. The museum is also home to some Renaissance and Baroque paintings, sculptures,and decorative arts from the late 13th century to c. 1750.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Museum of Fine Arts, Houston</span> Art museum, institute, library, sculpture park in Houston, TX United States

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), is an art museum located in the Houston Museum District of Houston, Texas. With the recent completion of an eight-year campus redevelopment project, including the opening of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Building in 2020, it is the 12th largest art museum in the world based on square feet of gallery space. The permanent collection of the museum spans more than 6,000 years of history with approximately 70,000 works from six continents.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Katzen Arts Center</span>

The Cyrus and Myrtle Katzen Arts Center is home to all of the visual and performing arts programs at American University and the American University Museum It is located at Ward Circle, the intersection of Nebraska Avenue and Massachusetts Avenues in Washington, D.C. This 130,000-square-foot (12,000 m2) space, designed to foster interdisciplinary collaboration in the arts, provides instructional, exhibition, and performance space for all the arts disciplines. Its 30,000-square-foot (3,000 m2) art museum exhibits contemporary art from the nation's capital region and the world. The museum gallery is the Washington region's largest university facility for art exhibition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Contemporary Arts Center</span>

The Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) is a contemporary art museum in Cincinnati, Ohio and one of the first contemporary art institutions in the United States. The CAC is a non-collecting museum that focuses on new developments in painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, performance art and new media. Focusing on programming that reflects "the art of the last five minutes", the CAC has displayed the works of many now-famous artists early in their careers, including Andy Warhol. In 2003, the CAC moved to a new building designed by Zaha Hadid.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Musée d'Arts de Nantes</span> Arts museum in Nantes, France

The Fine Arts Museum of Nantes, along with 14 other provincial museums, was created, by consular decree on 14 Fructidor in year IX. Today the museum is one of the largest museums in the region.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cantor Arts Center</span> Art museum in Stanford, California

The Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, formerly the Stanford University Museum of Art, and commonly known as the Cantor Arts Center, is an art museum on the campus of Stanford University in Stanford, California. The museum first opened in 1894 and consists of over 130,000 sq ft (12,000 m2) of exhibition space, including sculpture gardens. The Cantor Arts Center houses the largest collection of sculptures by Auguste Rodin outside of Paris and the Soumaya Museum in Mexico City, with 199 works, most in bronze but others in different media. The museum is open to the public and charges no admission.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Modern sculpture</span>

Modern sculpture is generally considered to have begun with the work of Auguste Rodin, who is seen as the progenitor of modern sculpture. While Rodin did not set out to rebel against the past, he created a new way of building his works. He "dissolved the hard outline of contemporary Neo-Greek academicism, and thereby created a vital synthesis of opacity and transparency, volume and void". Along with a few other artists in the late 19th century who experimented with new artistic visions in sculpture like Edgar Degas and Paul Gauguin, Rodin invented a radical new approach in the creation of sculpture. Modern sculpture, along with all modern art, "arose as part of Western society's attempt to come to terms with the urban, industrial and secular society that emerged during the nineteenth century".

Ball-Nogues Studio is a design and fabrication practice based in Los Angeles, California. Founded by Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues, the studio's work falls between the categories of art, architecture and industrial design. The practice is known for creating site-specific architectural installations out of unorthodox materials such as stainless steel ball-chain and spheres, paper pulp, garments, and coffee tables. The studio focuses on the process of creation, with an emphasis on the research and exploration of materials and fabrication methods. Much of the studio's work involves expanding the potential of materials and manufacturing techniques.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Modernism Week</span> Mid-century architecture and design event in Palm Springs, California, United States

Modernism Week is a 501(c)(3) organization which provides public education programming fostering knowledge and appreciation of modern architecture, the mid-century modern architecture and design movement, the Palm Springs School of Architecture, as well as contemporary considerations surrounding historic preservation, cultural heritage, adaptive reuse, and sustainable architecture. Modernism Week provides annual scholarships to local students pursuing college educations in the fields of architecture and design and supports local and state organizations' efforts to preserve and promote the region's modern architecture. The organization is centered in the greater Palm Springs, California area in the Coachella Valley which is home to a significant collection of extant residential and commercial buildings designed in the mid-century modern vernacular.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phillip K. Smith III</span>

Phillip K. Smith III is an American artist based out of Southern California. He primarily creates light-based work that draws upon ideas of light and space, form, color, light and shadow, environment, and change. Phillip K. Smith III received his Bachelor of Fine Arts and Bachelor of Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design. Phillip K Smith III has worked on and created numerous large-scale sculptures across the country, as well as internationally. He has participated in numerous museum installations and shows around the world. His artwork is held in many important private collections as well as multiple museum's permanent collections. Phillip K. Smith III has often been compared to his predecessors such as Robert Irwin, James Turrell, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Craig Kauffman, Constantin Brancusi, Sol Lewitt, and Kenneth Noland.

References

  1. Vankin, Deborah (2019-04-10). "Palm Springs Art Museum names Louis Grachos its new director". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2023-02-12.
  2. 1 2 "Desert Landscape". Palm Springs Art Museum. Retrieved March 24, 2016.
  3. "About Us: History". Palm Springs Art Museum. Retrieved April 1, 2012.
  4. Pricer, Jamie Lee (June 23, 2009). "Meet the man who brought the valley the Palm Springs Art Museum" . Retrieved April 1, 2012.
  5. A Golden Palm Star in front of the Palm Springs museum, part of the Palm Springs Walk of Stars, was dedicated to Sleight in 2000. Palm Springs Walk of Stars: By Date Dedicated Archived 2012-12-08 at the Wayback Machine
  6. David Colker, "Harold Meyerman, ex-banker who aided Palm Springs museum, dies at 76", Los Angeles Times , January 28, 2015.
  7. Alex Altman, "Some local nonprofits succeeding despite recession offer hope, lessons for a beleaguered sector", The Public Record (Palm Desert, CA), May 26, 2009.
  8. "Harold Meyerman", Artforum , January 28, 2015.
  9. "10Best: Palm Springs Art Museum". USA Today. Retrieved 2023-02-11.
  10. ""American Alliance of Museums Accredited Institutions as of July 2012"" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-09-24. Retrieved 2012-09-09.
  11. KESQ.com, "Palm Springs Art Museum Opens in Palm Desert", March 15, 2012
  12. Klein, Lee (March 15, 2012). "The State of Sculpture at Palm Springs Art Museum", NY Arts.
  13. 1 2 Ghazarian, Leah (November 10, 2014). "Palm Springs Art Museum Expands to include Architecture and Design Center". Architect Magazine . Retrieved February 13, 2023.
  14. Rottman, Zach (May 26, 2016). "Eye on Design: Andrea Zittel's Aggregated Stacks and the Collection of the Palm Springs Art Museum". College Art Association Reviews. doi: 10.3202/caa.reviews.2016.65 . Retrieved 2023-02-17.

Further reading