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Toledo Museum of Art
The Toledo Museum of Art is an
internationally known art museum found in Toledo, Ohio and started
in 1901 by local glassmaker Edward Drummond Libbey. The Greek
revival structure was moved to its current location in 1912, and it
has been enlarge twice, in the 1920s and 1930s. Housing major
collections of glass art, 19th and 20th century American and
European art, with smaller collections of Japanese, Roman,
Renaissance and Greek works. Famous individual artworks include;
Peter Paul Ruben's The Crowning of Saint Catherine, Fragonard's
Blind man's bluff, less significant works by El Greco and Rembrandt
and modern works by Sol LeWitt, Henry Moore and Willem de Kooning.
The museum has a concert hall in the east wing, called the
Peristyle, and constructed in the classical style to match the
exterior of the building, and is where the Toledo Symphony Orchestra
plays. Postwar sculptures can be found in the sculpture garden,
added in 2001, with earlier sculptures inside. In the 1990s, a
center for the visual arts was designed by Frank Gehry and contains
the library, studio, classroom for the art department of the
University of Toledo and offices. A new building was contracted in
2000 to house the glass collection, and in 2006, the Glass Pavilion
was opened and is said to be quite beautiful. It is here that the
original glass collection, plus new works, sits with one special
glass sculpture by Dale Chihuly. The museum is home to over
30,000 artworks that is ranked one of the finest in the United
States, contained in 35 galleries, sculpture garden and glass
pavilion. Other artists included in the collection include; Picasso,
Rubens, Bearden, Turner, Cezanne, El Greco, Calder, Holbein, Close,
Matisse, Cole, Miro, van Gogh, Monet and Degas. Present exhibitions
include the Bare Witness: Photographs by Gordon Parks and Paris:
City of Art. In the collection are selections from Africa, works on
paper, Asia, modern, decorative arts, glass, ancient, America from
1700 to 1900 and Europe from 1000 to 1900. Some of their sculptures
contain masks from various countries around the world and are
especially beautiful and intricate, with carvings, cuttings and
shapes that will amaze you with the exceptional skill that these
early peoples had with just rudimentary tools. This one of the
museums that you will have to plan on spending a day or more just to
see all of its collection, much less scrutinize it.
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