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Birmingham Museum of Art
The Birmingham Museum of Art in
Birmingham, Alabama started in 1951, and has blossomed into the best
art museum in the southeastern United States, containing over 24,000
works of art. These drawings, sculptures, paintings, decorative arts
and prints represent various cultures that include Pre-Columbian,
European, Native American, American, Asian and African relics. One
of the features of this magnificent collection is the Asian artworks
that is believed to be the best and most complete in the southeast,
with their Vietnamese ceramics collection the finest in the United
States. It is also home to the exciting Kress Collection of Baroque
and Renaissance sculpture, decorative arts and paintings spanning
the 13th century to around 1750, while the excellent 18th century
European decorative arts collection contains many wonderful examples
of French furniture and English ceramics. The museum is owned and
run by the city, sitting on 3.9 prime acres in the center of the
cultural district. The current building that houses this marvelous
museum was built in 1959 and designed by Warren, Knight and Davis;
with a major restructuring in 1993 by Edward Larrabee Barnes of New
York and now is 180,000 square feet that contains an outdoor
sculpture garden area. Some of the main features of the permanent
collection include; from the African art exhibits almost 2000
objects that came from the sub-Saharan Africa region and dates back
to the 12th century to the current period, which includes
outstanding examples of furniture, sculpture, masks, ritual objects,
household and utilitarian items, ceramics, textiles, and metal arts
that contain a Yoruba mask, Benin bronze hip pendant, an Egyptian
false door and divination portrait of a king from Dahomey. The
American collection contains relics from the late 18th century to
the mid 20th century with paintings by Georgia O'Keefe, Gilbert
Stuart and Childe Hassam, sculptures by Frederic Remington and Hiram
Powers, decorative arts items by Tiffany and Frank Lloyd Wright and
various works on paper. The masterpiece, Looking Down Yosemite
Valley, California by Bierstadt, was picked by the National
Endowment for the Humanities as one of the 40 American masterpieces
that best show the events, places and people that helped shape our
country and tell our story; as well as being thought of as one of
the three most prominent landscape paintings of our nation.
The Asian collection is equally represented with beautiful works
that began with a single gift of Chinese textiles back in 1951, and
now contains over 4000 works that do include the Vietnamese ceramics
reputed to be the best in the country; as well as a rare Ming
Dynasty temple wall and Tang Dynasty tomb figures from China. This
museum is the only gallery that contains Korean art in the entire
southeast and the Smithsonian Institution has loaned the Vetlesen
Jade Collection with 16th to 19th century items that happens to be
the most prominent jade collection in the country today. The
contemporary art collection contains video, photography, works on
paper, paintings, installation art and sculptures from the 1960s to
the current day; as well as a marvelous folk art collection. The
European art collection includes the Kress Collection of Renaissance
art that contains decorative arts, sculptures and paintings that are
dated back to the 13th century and go until 1750. The European
decorative arts collection is considered to be one of the
foundations of the museum's permanent collection that contain over
12,000 items that have glass, ceramics and furniture from the
Renaissance period to today. Among this fantastic collection is the
Eugenia Woodward Hitt Collection of 18th century French art that
includes furniture from the Louis XIV, XV and XVI eras, mounted
porcelain, works on paper from the Regence, paintings and gilt
bronzes; and the Dwight and Lucille Beeson Wedgwood Collection is
the best that exists outside of England, having over 1400 pieces of
the complete production of the Wedgwood factory from its start to
the 19th century. The Pre-Columbian collection is nothing short of
spectacular, and the Charles W. Ireland Sculpture garden rounds out
the exterior to make this fabulous museum the stunning institution
it is today.
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