Columbia Museum of Art
The museum’s collection contains more than seven thousand paintings, works-on-paper, and examples of the decorative arts. Resources within the museum include an art library, an auditorium with a fully equipped audio-visual booth and onstage dual projection screens, and a teacher resource center.
The Columbia Museum of Art was established in 1950 as an art, history, and science museum and included the Gibbes Planetarium. In 1990 the mission statement was changed to focus entirely on American and European fine, design, and decorative arts from the medieval period to the present. In 1998 the museum was relocated from the Taylor House on Bull Street to a new facility on Main Street.
The museum’s collection contains more than seven thousand paintings, works-on-paper, and examples of the decorative arts. Gifts from the Kress Foundation in 1954 and 1963 enhanced the collection with works by such artists as Bernardo Bellotto, Sandro Botticelli, François Boucher, Canaletto, Francesco Guardi, Nicholas Maes, and Tintoretto. Other early gifts included Claude Monet’s The Seine at Giverny and Frederic Remington’s Bronco Buster. Between 1998 and 2001 important new acquisitions to the collection included works by Alexander Archipenko, James Brooks, Joseph Cornell, Richard Hamilton, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Sam Maloof, Henry Moore, Robert Motherwell, Gustav Stickley, Mark Tobey, Carrie Mae Weems, and Andy Warhol.
Resources within the museum include an art library, an auditorium with a fully equipped audio-visual booth and onstage dual projection screens, and a teacher resource center. The art library contains a collection of fourteen thousand volumes, exhibition catalogs, art periodicals, selected auction catalogs, auction-sales-result publications, and specialized art dictionaries and encyclopedias. The museum plays an active role in children’s art education programs. School programs are curriculum based and include both gallery and studio activities that encourage learning through interaction and response. The museum is accredited by the American Association of Museums.
