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| Established | October 1964 |
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| Location | Billings, Montana |
| Type | Contemporary art museum |
The Yellowstone Art Museum (YAM) in downtown Billings, Montana, United States is the largest contemporary art museum in Montana.
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| Established | October 1964 |
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| Location | Billings, Montana |
| Type | Contemporary art museum |
The Yellowstone Art Museum (YAM) in downtown Billings, Montana, United States is the largest contemporary art museum in Montana.
The Yellowstone Art Center (now the Yellowstone Art Museum, or YAM) opened in October 1964 in the former Yellowstone County Jail. The construction of the county jail in 1884 was the first act of the newly instituted Yellowstone County government. It began as a small red brick structure. The partial basement of the jail functioned as storage, while the upper two floors served as cell blocks. In 1916, the county constructed additions to the west and north. In spite of Montana's location in the Wild West, only one hanging, in 1918, is known to have taken place at the Yellowstone County Jail. [1]
Operating in a region where the established museums emphasized Western genre art and historic artifacts, staff and volunteer leadership early on defined an alternate, wide-ranging mission. The goal was to develop a collection and programs that acknowledged the rich artistic practice occurring in the present. Today the YAM remains the only visual arts institution within an immense geographic area, which it serves with a very active program of changing exhibitions in the main galleries, adjunct programs for adults, curriculum-based art education, and community events and festivals. [2] The YAM's Annual Art Auction, begun in 1969, is the earliest contemporary art auction in a region that now boasts dozens that emulate the YAM. [3] Summerfair, begun in 1979, was also the region's first outdoor arts & crafts fair and holds its lead as one of the region's finest. [4]
Pride in the growing permanent collection (now numbering over 7,400 works of historic and contemporary regional art), has grown steadily as the YAM has matured. A concerted effort has been made to collect work from outstanding regional artists ranging from the internationally celebrated Rudy Autio, John Buck, Deborah Butterfield, Isabelle Johnson, Richard Notkin, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Ted Waddell, and Patrick Zentz, to lesser-known and emerging artists. At the time the museum began to collect, these artists were not represented as a group in any Montana museum. The popularity and growth of the "Montana Collection" has exceeded expectations. The acquisition of the Virginia Snook Collection, the largest gathering of the work of cowboy writer and illustrator Will James, has given the collection another dimension. The estate of Isabelle Johnson, a pioneering Montana modernist, is also represented. [5]
The YAM holds hundreds of works in its Poindexter Collection of New York Abstract Expressionism, including the works of Nell Blaine, Earl Kerkam, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Jules Olitski, and Teiji Takai. [6]
In 2009, the YAM was proud to be the Montana recipient of a gift of 50 works of minimalist and conceptual art from the internationally significant collection of Herbert and Dorothy Vogel. The Vogel gift—50 Works for 50 States—transpired under the auspices of the National Gallery of Art and involved the selection of one institution per state to receive a gift of 50 works. The Peter Norton Family Christmas Project Collection ensures that several internationally important artists (for example, Yinka Shonibare and Takashi Murakami) are represented in the collection. [7] [8]
In 1995, the YAM (then the Yellowstone Art Center) received the Montana Governor's Award for Service to the Arts. This recognition of the institution's statewide importance underscored the fact that the museum had outgrown its facility. Expansion plans and a capital campaign were launched. The campaign was a success: $6.2 million was raised primarily from and through the local community. In February 1998, the newly renamed Yellowstone Art Museum reopened its doors after two years of renovation and new construction. Its new facility was designed to protect its collections and display them in the most inspiring and meaningful way possible. The YAM is now recognized nationally as a premier regional art museum, proud to be recognized as the state's "flagship" art museum.
Growth has not stopped since reopening the expanded facility. Temporary exhibitions include local, national, and international arts. Education is a key focus; class and workshop programs are coordinated to relate to temporary exhibitions, or are stand-alone. In 2003, 2007, and 2010, the YAM received three-year grants from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) in support of its art education programs, both on-site and outreach. Lectures featuring nationally known contemporary artists and critics, gallery talks, and special events are the main programs for the adult audience. In addition, a Young Artists' Gallery, established in 2006 in a large space that is free to the public at all times, features work by artists under 18 who are part of the YAM's school partnership programs. [9] The Raven's Café d'Art opened in 2010 and has gained a reputation as a site for excellent, satisfying fare. [10]
In 2003, the Montana-based Charles M. Bair Family Trust, recognizing that the YAM's own permanent collection had grown faster than expected and that the YAM needed to expand storage, made a grant to the YAM in 2005 to purchase the warehouse at 505 North 26th Street, with the intention that it be converted into high quality, expanded collection storage space. In 2006, the YAM entered into an agreement with the Charles M. Bair Family Trust that would result in a $2.15 million grant upon the YAM's raising $1 million in new capital and endowment gifts and pledges. The YAM achieved 147% of the goal by the deadline of 31 December 2007 and used the Bair Trust's challenge grant as the launching point for another major fundraising campaign. In 2007 a two-phased $17 million Expansion Campaign began. One result of this campaign was the YAM's innovative Visible Vault, which opened in August 2010. It is a publicly accessible art storage facility that houses the permanent collection in an open, visible fashion. The facility also includes an artist-in-residence studio. Artists-in-residence have included Tracy Linder, Brian Keith Scott, Brooke Atherton, Carol Spielman, John Pollock and Bently Spang. The Yellowstone Art Museum is one of only a handful of art museums in the country that have placed their entire collection storage areas on public view. [11]
The Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University is an art museum at Indiana University Bloomington, which opened in 1941 as the Indiana University Museum of Art under the direction of Henry Radford Hope. The museum was intended to be the center of a “cultural crossroads,” an idea brought forth by then-Indiana University President Herman B Wells. The present museum building was designed by I.M. Pei and Partners and dedicated in 1982. The museum's collection comprises approximately 45,000 objects, with about 1,400 on display. The collection includes items ranging from ancient jewelry to paintings by Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock. In May 2016, after the announcement of the largest cash gift in the museum's history, the museum was renamed the Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art in honor of Indianapolis-based philanthropists Sidney and Lois Eskenazi. The museum is located on the Indiana University Bloomington campus at 1133 E. Seventh Street.
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) is a contemporary art museum with two locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near the Walt Disney Concert Hall. MOCA's original space, initially intended as a temporary exhibit space while the main facility was built, is now known as the Geffen Contemporary and located in the Little Tokyo district of downtown Los Angeles. Between 2000 and 2019, it operated a satellite facility at the Pacific Design Center facility in West Hollywood.
The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the U.S.: together with the adjacent Minneapolis Sculpture Garden and Cowles Conservatory, it has an annual attendance of around 700,000 visitors. The museum's permanent collection includes over 13,000 modern and contemporary art pieces, including books, costumes, drawings, media works, paintings, photography, prints, and sculpture.
The Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG) is an art museum in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Its permanent collection includes over 24,000 works from Canadian, Indigenous Canadian, and international artists. The museum also holds the world's largest collection of Inuit art. In addition to exhibits for its collection, the museum has organized and hosted a number of travelling arts exhibitions. Its building complex consists of a main building that includes 11,000 square metres (120,000 sq ft) of indoor space and the adjacent 3,700-square-metre (40,000 sq ft) Qaumajuq building.
The Smithsonian American Art Museum is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds one of the world's largest and most inclusive collections of art, from the colonial period to the present, made in the United States. More than 7,000 artists are represented in the museum's collection. Most exhibitions are held in the museum's main building, the Old Patent Office Building, while craft-focused exhibitions are shown in the Renwick Gallery.
The American Folk Art Museum is an art museum in the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, at 2 Lincoln Square, Columbus Avenue at 66th Street. It is the premier institution devoted to the aesthetic appreciation of folk art and creative expressions of contemporary self-taught artists from the United States and abroad.
The Wolfsonian–Florida International University or The Wolfsonian–FIU, located in the heart of the Art Deco District of Miami Beach, Florida, is a museum, library and research center that uses its collection to illustrate the persuasive power of art and design. Since 1997, The Wolfsonian has been a division within Florida International University.
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.
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.
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.
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 5,000 years of history with nearly 80,000 works from six continents. In 2023, the museum received over 900,000 visitors, making it the 20th most-visited museum in the United States.
The Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum is an art museum located in the Modesto A. Maidique campus of Florida International University (FIU) in Miami, Florida. Founded in 1977 as 'The Art Museum at Florida International University', it was renamed 'The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum' in 2003.
The MacKenzie Art Gallery is an art museum located in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. The museum occupies the multipurpose T. C. Douglas Building, situated at the edge of the Wascana Centre. The building holds eight galleries totaling to 2,200 square metres (24,000 sq ft) of exhibition space.
Herbert Vogel and Dorothy Vogel, once described as "proletarian art collectors," worked as civil servants in New York City for more than a half-century while amassing what has been called one of the most important post-1960s art collections in the United States, mostly of minimalist and conceptual art. Herbert Vogel died on July 22, 2012, in a Manhattan nursing home.
The Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art (NEHMA) is an accredited academic art museum focused on modern and contemporary art at Utah State University in Logan, Utah. NEHMA was founded in 1982 with the ceramic collection of philanthropist and namesake Nora Eccles Harrison. The museum has since expanded to include over 5,500 objects focused on modernist and contemporary works created in the western region of the United States. The core of the collection explores certain key art historical movements including Beat, Los Angeles Post-Surrealism, Santa Fe Transcendentalism, and Bay Area Abstract Expressionism. The museum also collects and exhibits contemporary works that function as glimpses of the thriving art scenes found in many cities in the Western United States. Additionally, the museum serves as the recipient of the Vogel Collection for the state of Utah.
The Weatherspoon Art Museum is located at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and is one of the largest collections of modern and contemporary art in the southeast with a focus on American art. Its programming includes fifteen or more exhibitions per year, year-round educational activities, and scholarly publications. The Weatherspoon Art Museum was accredited by the American Alliance of Museums in 1995 and earned reaccreditation status in 2005.
Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art is an art museum located at 1400 First Avenue North in Great Falls, Montana, in the United States. The building was constructed in 1896 to house the city's first high school, Great Falls High School. The high school moved to new quarters in 1931, at which time the building was renamed Paris Gibson Junior High School. The junior high school vacated the premises in 1975 for a new building. In 1977, Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art was formed, and it took ownership of the building. It is one of six museums in the city. The structure was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in September 1976.
The Boise Art Museum (BAM) is located at 670 Julia Davis Drive in Boise, Idaho, and is part of a series of public museums and cultural attractions in Julia Davis Park. It is the permanent home of a growing collection of contemporary realism, modern and contemporary ceramics, as well as the largest public collection of works by acclaimed Idaho outsider artist and bookmaker James Charles Castle. The museum also features major traveling exhibitions and installations throughout the year.
Jessie Spaulding Wilber was an American printmaker and educator.
Cheryl Laemmle is an American contemporary surrealist painter of figures, animals, and imaginary landscapes.
45°47′09″N108°30′26″W / 45.7858°N 108.5071°W
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