Established | 1981 |
---|---|
Location | 200 West Jones Avenue San Antonio, Texas United States |
Coordinates | 29°26′15″N98°28′56″W / 29.437568°N 98.482089°W |
Director | Emily Neff |
Website | www.samuseum.org |
The San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA) is an art museum in Downtown San Antonio, Texas, USA. The museum spans 5,000 years of global culture. The museum is housed in the historic former Lone Star Brewery (1886) on the Museum Reach of the San Antonio River Walk. Following a $7.2 million renovation, it opened to the public in March 1981. [1]
In 1926, the San Antonio Museum Association founded the Witte Memorial Museum with the intentions of collecting various works of art and natural history objects. [2] By the 1970s, the Witte Memorial Museum acquired notable works of art by artists such as Frank Stella, Wayne Thiebaud, and Philip Guston. [2] Due to the growing pace of art acquisitions, Jack McGregor (former director of the San Antonio Museum Association) recommended the board purchase the former Lone Star Brewery complex and split away from the Witte Memorial Museum. [2] SAMA officially opened its doors to the public on March 1, 1981. [2]
In 1985, it received collections of Latin American Folk Art formed by former vice president Nelson A. Rockefeller and Robert K. Winn. [1]
The museum is situated on the northern section of the Riverwalk. With the opening of the Gloria Galt River Landing in 2009, it now anchors the "Museum Reach" expansion of the celebrated Riverwalk.
The museum's collection of more than 30,000 objects representing 5,000 years of history and culture from every region of the world includes important works from Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities, Asian art, Latin American art, and Contemporary art.
The museum houses one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of ancient Egyptian, Near Eastern, Greek and Roman art in the southern United States. The Egyptian collection hold objects from the Pre-dynastic through the late Roman and Byzantine periods. It also houses an important and rare collection of Greek and Roman sculpture that encompasses portraits, funerary sculpture, and mythological subjects.
The Asian art collection is housed in the Lenora and Walter F. Brown Asian Art Wing, a 15,000 square foot suite of galleries that opened in 2005. Over the past 70 years, the museum's Asian art collections have grown to become one of the most impressive in the United States, including more than 1,500 works from China, India, Japan, Korea, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tibet, and Vietnam.
The museum has one of the most comprehensive collections of Latin American art in the United States. The collection is housed in the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Latin American Art, which opened to the public in 1998. The center offers an overview of artwork from Mexico, Central and South America, and many counties of the Caribbean, and one of the world's most important repositories of Latin American folk art with a collection numbering over 7,000 objects.
A significant portion of the museum's Contemporary collection is devoted to post-World War II American painting and sculpture, including an emphasis on modernist abstraction. In addition, it has always been committed to the collection of Contemporary Texas Art, and it features paintings and sculpture produced by Texas artists form the last 1960s to present day. The collection includes two sculptures by San Antonio-born Bonnie MacLeary. [3]
The museum also contains a collection devoted to Oceanic art, found on the fourth floor of the Nancy Brown Negley West Tower. Works from Papua New Guinea and French Polynesia comprise a large part of the collection. Maori, Hawaiian, and Aboriginal Australian art can also be found in the collection. [4]
From 1982 through 1985, the museum also operated a heritage streetcar service, using an original San Antonio streetcar built in 1913 and nicknamed "Old 300". The all-yellow car operated on a short section of Texas Transportation Company (TXTC) tracks behind it. TXTC was an electric railroad, operating trains powered from overhead trolley wires, and its tracks still reached the former Lone Star Brewery complex, in which it was installed in 1981. Streetcar service in San Antonio ended in 1933, but car 300 was preserved at that time by the San Antonio Museums Association. In 1981, volunteers restored car 300 to operating condition as a historical attraction.
Public operation began in October 1982. [5] The car ran twice a day Tuesday through Friday and six times a day on weekends, [6] but budget cuts led to the service's being discontinued at the end of 1985. [5] The 1913 streetcar was placed in storage, being operated (without passengers) a few times a year to keep it in running condition, [5] until 1990, when it was leased to a company in Portland, Oregon, for use on the Willamette Shore Trolley line there.
The museum continued to be car 300's owner, leasing it to entities in Oregon, but in 2005 it sold the car to the Astoria Riverfront Trolley Association, who had been operating it on a popular heritage streetcar line in Astoria, Oregon, since 1999. [7]
A heritage railway or heritage railroad is a railway operated as living history to re-create or preserve railway scenes of the past. Heritage railways are often old railway lines preserved in a state depicting a period in the history of rail transport.
The Willamette Shore Trolley is a heritage railroad or heritage streetcar that operates along the west bank of the Willamette River between Portland and Lake Oswego in the U.S. state of Oregon. The right-of-way is owned by a group of local-area governments who purchased it in 1988 in order to preserve it for potential future rail transit. Streetcar excursion service began operating on a trial basis in 1987, lasting about three months, and regular operation on a long-term basis began in 1990. The Oregon Electric Railway Historical Society has been the line's operator since 1995.
The Oregon Electric Railway Historical Society (OERHS) is a non-profit organization in the U.S. state of Oregon, founded in 1957. It owns and operates a railroad museum for electric railroad and streetcar enthusiasts, and also operates a separate heritage streetcar line, the Willamette Shore Trolley.
The M-Line Trolley is a heritage streetcar line in the Uptown neighborhood of Dallas, Texas. The trolley line, which has been in service since 1989, is notable for its use of restored historic streetcar vehicles, as opposed to modern replicas.
The Pearl Brewing Company was an American brewery established in 1883 in downtown San Antonio, Texas, United States. In 1985, Pearl's parent company purchased the Pabst Brewing Company and assumed the Pabst name.
The Texas Transportation Company was an electrified, Class III, short-line railroad in San Antonio, Texas, that operated from 1897 until 2001. It served the Pearl Brewery and several other businesses, moving carloads between those businesses and the Southern Pacific yard. Service ended on June 30, 2000, shortly before the Pabst Brewing Company closed the Pearl Brewery, in early 2001.
The Fort Smith Trolley Museum is a streetcar and railroad museum in Fort Smith, in the U.S. state of Arkansas, which includes an operating heritage streetcar line. The museum opened in 1985, and operation of its streetcar line began in 1991. Four vehicles in its collection, a streetcar and three steam locomotives, are listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). The now approximately three-quarters-mile-long (1.2 km) streetcar line also passes four NRHP-listed sites, including the Fort Smith National Historic Site, the Fort Smith National Cemetery, the West Garrison Avenue Historic District and the 1907 Atkinson-Williams Warehouse Building, which now houses the Fort Smith Museum of History.
Streetcars or trolley(car)s were once the chief mode of public transit in hundreds of North American cities and towns. Most of the original urban streetcar systems were either dismantled in the mid-20th century or converted to other modes of operation, such as light rail. Today, only Toronto still operates a streetcar network essentially unchanged in layout and mode of operation.
The culture of San Antonio reflects the history and culture of one of the state's oldest and largest cities straddling the regional and cultural divide between South and Central Texas. Historically, San Antonio culture comes from a blend of Central Texas and South Texas (Southwestern) culture. Founded as a Spanish outpost and the first civil settlement in Texas, San Antonio is heavily influenced by Mexican American culture due to Texas formerly being part of Mexico and, previously, the Spanish Empire. The city also has significant German, Anglo, and African American cultural influences. San Antonio offers a host of cultural institutions, events, restaurants and nightlife in South Texas for both residents and visitors alike.
The Oregon Electric Railway Museum is the largest streetcar/trolley museum in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. It is owned and operated by the Oregon Electric Railway Historical Society and is located in Brooks, Oregon, on the grounds of Powerland Heritage Park.
The Witte Museum is a museum located in Brackenridge Park in San Antonio, Texas, and was established in 1926. It is dedicated to telling the stories of Texas, from prehistory to the present. The permanent collection features historic artifacts and photographs, Texas art, textiles, dinosaur bones, cave drawings, and Texas wildlife dioramas, in addition to nationally acclaimed traveling exhibits. Artwork in the collection includes sculpture by San Antonio-born Bonnie MacLeary.
Robert Jenkins Onderdonk was an American painter and art teacher, born in Catonsville, Maryland. An important artist in the first stage of Texas art, he was a long-time art teacher in San Antonio and Dallas, where he formed art associations and leagues; for his contributions to the culture of art and painting in Texas he is known as the "Dean of Texas's Artists."
The Lone Star Brewery, built in 1884, was the first large mechanized brewery in Texas. Adolphus Busch, of Anheuser-Busch, founded it along with a group of San Antonio businessmen. The castle-like building which was once its brewery now houses the San Antonio Museum of Art. Lone Star beer was the company's main brand. The beer is still marketed as "The National Beer of Texas." The Lone Star name is now owned by Pabst Brewing Company. Production of Lone Star is currently contracted out to Miller Brewing Company in Fort Worth. The Lone Star name is used in the Philippines under license to Asia Brewery for a brand of light beer.
The Buckhorn Saloon & Museum is a privately run museum located at 318 E. Houston Street in Downtown San Antonio, Texas, U.S. Originally privately owned by Albert Friedrich, the Buckhorn became a tourist attraction for its unique collections. Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders were reputed to frequent the establishment. Housed in 1956 in the Old Lone Star Brewery, the collection passed to Friedrich's heirs who had it moved to its current location.
The Astoria Riverfront Trolley is a 3-mile (4.8 km) heritage streetcar line that operates in Astoria, Oregon, United States, using former freight railroad tracks along or near the south bank of the Columbia River, with no overhead line. The service began operating in 1999, using a 1913-built streetcar from San Antonio, Texas. As of 2012, the service was reported as carrying 35,000 to 40,000 passengers per year and has been called a "symbol" and "icon" of Astoria. The line's operation is seasonal, normally during spring break and from May through September.
Ellen Dorothy Schulz Quillin was an American botanist, author, and museum director who helped establish the Witte Museum in San Antonio, Texas. She was the museum's director from 1926 to 1960. Quillin also wrote several field guides relating to plants in Texas.
Chester Dixon Snowden (1900–1984), was born Chester Genora Snowden in Elgin, Texas. Snowden was the son of James Albert Snowden and Amelia Pearl Frazier. He graduated from The University of Texas at Austin and attended the Cooper Union in New York as well as studying at the Art Students League of New York, Grand Central Galleries Art School and the Richard Art School in Los Angeles. His teachers included Harry Sternberg, Boardman Robinson and Walter Jack Duncan.
Harry Hertzberg was a prominent San Antonio lawyer, civic leader, and Texas state senator. Together with Tom Scaperlanda he donated the oldest public circus collection in the United States and one of the largest in existence originally to the San Antonio Public Library and now at the Witte Museum. He donated to the San Antonio Public Library almost 15,000 rare books.