Palmer Museum of Art

Last updated
Palmer Museum of Art
WEB PAL9714.jpg
Sandstone facade of the new Palmer Museum of Art on Bigler Road
Palmer Museum of Art
EstablishedOctober 10, 1972 (1972-10-10)
LocationBigler Road, University Park, PA 16802-2507
Coordinates 40°48′25″N77°52′05″W / 40.806823611338984°N 77.86795451408734°W / 40.806823611338984; -77.86795451408734
Type Art museum
Collection sizeOver 10,500 works
DirectorErin M. Coe
ArchitectAllied Works
Owner Penn State
Nearest car parkParking on campus
Website palmermuseum.psu.edu
Mother and Son (1799) by John Brewster, Jr. BrewsterMotherSon.jpg
Mother and Son (1799) by John Brewster, Jr.

The Palmer Museum of Art is the art museum of Pennsylvania State University, located on the University Park campus in State College, Pennsylvania.

Contents

Collections

The museum has an increasing permanent collection of more than 10,500 works. The collection includes American and European paintings, drawings, photographs, prints, and sculpture; contemporary European, American, and Japanese studio ceramics; Asian ceramics, paintings, jades and prints; and objects from ancient African, European, Near Eastern, and American cultures.

The American collection features early portraits by John Brewster, Jr., Jacob Eichholtz, Rembrandt Peale, Gilbert Stuart, and Benjamin West; 19th-century landscape paintings by Sanford Robinson Gifford, George Inness, John F. Kensett, and William Trost Richards; Ashcan School works by William Glackens, Robert Henri, Maurice Prendergast, Everett Shinn, and John Sloan; There are Modernist and Postmodernist works by Alexander Calder, Jerome Witkin, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Joseph Stella, Marguerite Zorach, Nathan Oliveira, and Jules Olitski, as well as a major collection of works by Seymour Lipton. There are sculptures by Dale Chihuly, Willie Cole, and Alex Katz, and a number of Andy Warhol’s photographs.

The print collection has significant holdings of American prints, Japanese woodblock prints, photographs, contemporary art, and a series of feminist art portfolios including Femfolio, and 10x10: Ten Women, Ten Prints. Notable artists include Kara Walker, Carrie Mae Weems, Faith Ringgold, Miriam Schapiro, Emma Amos, Eleanor Antin, Nancy Azara, Betsy Damon, Mary Beth Edelson, Lauren Ewing, Harmony Hammond, Joyce Kozloff, Diane Neumaier, Faith Ringgold, Carolee Schneemann, Joan Semmel, Sylvia Sleigh, Joan Snyder, Nancy Spero, May Stevens, Athena Tacha, June Wayne, and Martha Wilson. Other prints in the collection include works by Edward Hopper, Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood.

The European collection features Old Master paintings, 19th-century paintings, prints and drawings, and 20th-century photographs and ceramics. Its non-Western holdings include works by Fernando Botero and Yinka Shonibare, collections of Japanese woodcuts, Asian sculpture and ceramics, African sculpture, and Peruvian ceramics. There is also an adjoining sculpture garden with works by Lipton and Bonnie Collura.

One of the museum's most popular works is a massive pair of bronze lion's paws that flank the building's front steps. Modeled by sculptor Paul Bowden in 1993, they playfully evoke the traditional lion statues that flank Beaux-arts buildings, such as the New York Public Library, and also pay tribute to Penn State's mascot, the Nittany Lion. [1]

The museum's permanent photographic collection includes an array of hidden mother photographs, which became popular in the early 2010s as interest in such photographs spread on the internet. [2]

History

The University Art Museum's original building was a Brutalist "box," containing three galleries, that opened in 1972. [3] Post-modernist architect Charles Willard Moore greatly expanded the building in 1993, converting the "box" into a 150-seat auditorium, and wrapping eleven new galleries around it. He created a lively entrance plaza, reminiscent of his Piazza d'Italia (1978) in New Orleans, Louisiana, adding multiple levels and a graduated arcade of brick arches resting on cartoon Tuscan columns. The museum was renamed to honor James and Barbara Palmer, who initiated the campaign to expand the building in 1986 with a $2 million gift.

The museum's founding director was William Hull, for whom one of the galleries is named. The current director is Erin M. Coe.

The Friends of the Palmer Museum of Art was founded in 1974 to aid in fund-raising and public outreach. The museum has a Friends Leadership Council as well as a National Advisory Council.

In summer and fall 2023, the museum moved to a new, 73,000-square-foot facility at the Arboretum at Penn State which has new educational spaces and nearly twice the amount of current exhibition space. [4]

The museum is temporarily closed while it transitions from the 52-year location on Curtin Road to the new state-of-the-art museum on Bigler Road at the Penn State Arboretum, slated to open to the public on June 1, 2024.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Victoria and Albert Museum</span> Art museum in London, England

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and named after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Museum of Anthropology at UBC</span> Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, Canada

The Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia (UBC) campus in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada displays world arts and cultures, in particular works by First Nations of the Pacific Northwest. As well as being a major tourist destination, MOA is a research and teaching museum, where UBC courses in art, anthropology, archaeology, conservation, and museum studies are given. MOA houses close to 50,000 ethnographic objects, as well as 535,000 archaeological objects in its building alone.

<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">Detroit Institute of Arts</span> Art museum in Detroit, Michigan

The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) is a museum institution located in Midtown Detroit, Michigan. It has one of the largest and most significant art collections in the United States. With over 100 galleries, it covers 658,000 square feet (61,100 m2) with a major renovation and expansion project completed in 2007 that added 58,000 square feet (5,400 m2). The DIA collection is regarded as among the top six museums in the United States with an encyclopedic collection which spans the globe from ancient Egyptian and European works to contemporary art. Its art collection is valued in billions of dollars, up to $8.1 billion USD according to a 2014 appraisal. The DIA campus is located in Detroit's Cultural Center Historic District, about 2 miles (3.2 km) north of the downtown area, across from the Detroit Public Library near Wayne State University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Musée Picasso</span> Museum in Paris, France

The Musée Picasso is an art gallery located in the Hôtel Salé in rue de Thorigny, in the Marais district of Paris, France, dedicated to the work of the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (1881–1973). The museum collection includes more than 5,000 works of art and tens of thousands of archived pieces from Picasso's personal repository, including the artist's photographic archive, personal papers, correspondence, and author manuscripts. A large portion of items were donated by Picasso's family after his death, in accord with the wishes of the artist, who lived in France from 1905 to 1973.

<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">Honolulu Museum of Art</span> Art museum in Honolulu, Hawaii, United States

The Honolulu Museum of Art is an art museum in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. The museum is the largest of its kind in the state, and was founded in 1922 by Anna Rice Cooke. The museum has one of the largest single collections of Asian and Pan-Pacific art in the United States, and since its official opening on April 8, 1927, its collections have grown to more than 55,000 works of art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Huntsville Museum of Art</span>

Huntsville Museum of Art (HMA) is a museum located in Huntsville, Alabama. HMA sits in Big Spring Park within Downtown Huntsville, and serves as a magnet for cultural activities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Museum of Fine Arts (Budapest)</span> Art museum in Heroes Square, Budapest

The Museum of Fine Arts is a museum in Heroes' Square, Budapest, Hungary, facing the Palace of Art.

<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">Crocker Art Museum</span> American art museum in Sacramento, California

The Crocker Art Museum is the oldest art museum in the Western United States, located in Sacramento, California. Founded in 1885, the museum holds one of the premier collections of Californian art. The collection includes American works dating from the Gold Rush to the present, European paintings and master drawings, one of the largest international ceramics collections in the U.S., and collections of Asian, African, and Oceanic art. The Crocker Art Museum has been accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, a high standard for US museums.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art</span> Art Museum in Gainesville, Florida

The Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art is an art museum at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida. It is in the UF Cultural Plaza area in the southwest part of campus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Memphis Brooks Museum of Art</span> Art museum in Memphis, Tennessee

Memphis Brooks Museum of Art is an art museum in Memphis, Tennessee. The Brooks Museum, which was founded in 1916, is the oldest and largest art museum in the state of Tennessee. The museum is a privately funded nonprofit institution located in Overton Park in Midtown Memphis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rhode Island School of Design Museum</span> Art & design museum in Rhode Island

The Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design is an art museum integrated with the Rhode Island School of Design, in Providence, Rhode Island, US. The museum was co-founded with the school in 1877. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the United States, and has seven curatorial departments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Princeton University Art Museum</span> Art museum in New Jersey, US

The Princeton University Art Museum (PUAM) is the Princeton University gallery of art, located in Princeton, New Jersey. With a collecting history that began in 1755, the museum was formally established in 1882, and now houses over 113,000 works of art ranging from antiquity to the contemporary period. The Princeton University Art Museum dedicates itself to supporting and enhancing the university's goals of teaching, research, and service in fields of art and culture, as well as to serving regional communities and visitors from around the world. Its collections concentrate on the Mediterranean region, Western Europe, Asia, the United States, and Latin America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reading Public Museum</span> Museum in West Reading, Pennsylvania

The Reading Public Museum is a museum in Reading, Pennsylvania located in the 18th Ward, along the Wyomissing Creek. The museum's permanent collection mainly focuses on art, science, and civilization and contains over 280,000 objects. It also has a planetarium and a 25-acre (100,000 m2) arboretum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arizona State University Art Museum</span> Art museum in Tempe, Arizona

The Arizona State University Art Museum is an art museum operated by Arizona State University, located on its main campus in Tempe, Arizona. The Art Museum has some 12,000 objects in its permanent collection and describes its primary focuses as contemporary art, including new media and "innovative methods of presentation"; crafts, with an emphasis on American ceramics; historic and contemporary prints; art from Arizona and the Southwestern United States, with an emphasis on Latino artists, and art of the Americas, with one historic American pieces and modernist and contemporary Latin American works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">University of New Mexico Art Museum</span>

The University of New Mexico Art Museum is an art museum at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. The museum's permanent collection includes nearly 30,000 objects, making it the largest collection of fine art in New Mexico.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bury Art Museum</span> Art museum in Moss Street, Bury

Bury Art Museum and Sculpture Centre, formerly known as Bury Museum and Art Gallery, is a public museum, archives, and art gallery in the town of Bury, Greater Manchester, northern England, owned by Bury Council. Built in 1901, the museum's buildings were restored and reopened in 2005.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Newcastle Art Gallery</span> Art Museum in New South Wales, Australia

The Newcastle Art Gallery is a large, public art museum in Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia.

References

  1. Palmer Museum of Art Archived 2014-03-14 at the Wayback Machine from Arbonies King Vlock.
  2. McElwee, Steve (16 January 2015). "Erasing the matron: Palmer Museum's 'Hidden Mother' collection displays haunting edited photographs". Centre Daily Times. Retrieved 29 January 2018.
  3. "Palmer Museum 40th Anniversary," from Penn State News, October 31, 2012.
  4. "Palmer Museum of Art prepares for transition to new museum in 2023". Penn State News. 15 November 2022. Retrieved 2023-03-12.

40°48′02″N77°51′57″W / 40.8005°N 77.8657°W / 40.8005; -77.8657