About

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Past and Present

The Georgia Museum of Art, on the campus of the University of Georgia, in Athens, is both an bookish museum and, since 1982, the official art museum of the land of Georgia. The permanent collection consists of American paintings, primarily 19th- and 20th-century; American, European and Asian works on paper; the Samuel H. Kress Study Collection of Italian Renaissance paintings; and growing collections of southern decorative arts and Asian art.

From the fourth dimension it was opened to the public in 1948 in the basement of the old library on the university's historic N Campus, the museum has grown consistently both in the size of its collection and in the size of its facilities. Today the museum occupies a contemporary building in the Performing and Visual Arts Complex on the university'south burgeoning due east campus. There, 79,000 square feet house well-nigh 17,000 objects in the museum's permanent collection—a dramatic leap from the core of 100 paintings donated by the museum's founder, Alfred Heber Holbrook.

Much of the museum'south collection of American paintings was donated by Holbrook in memory of his beginning wife, Eva Underhill Holbrook. Included in this drove are works past such luminaries as Frank Weston Benson, William Merritt Chase, Stuart Davis, Arthur Dove, Georgia O'Keeffe, Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, Jacob Lawrence and Theodore Robinson. Over the years it has been impossible to separate the history of the museum from the story of Holbrook's generosity.

Holbrook retired from an active New York law do at the age of 70. He began a personal quest to learn nearly the world of art, an interest piqued by his passion for visiting museums. In his retirement he was adamant to study art in a gentle southern climate. A trip to Athens in the mid-1940s led to his introduction to Lamar Dodd, head of the academy'southward art department. Instantly, the two began a friendship, sharing a joint vision of enriching the visual arts environment in Georgia. Holbrook, clad in a knee-length pink artist's smock with piping in paw, attended art classes at the university. The Georgia Museum of Art was founded in 1945, and Holbrook became its first director and one of the academy'south and the land'south nearly beloved citizens. Holbrook connected to serve as the museum'south managing director past his 90th birthday.

Under the leadership of succeeding directors, numerous museum exhibitions take traveled to national and international venues. When "Adriaen van Ostade: Etchings of Peasant Life in Kingdom of the netherlands's Golden Age" was exhibited at the Rembrandt House in Amsterdam, the catalogue quickly sold out, condign a text for the study of 17th-century Dutch printmaking in classrooms across the United states. This exhibition besides reflected the importance of prints and drawings in the programming of the museum, which houses one of the finest collections of works on newspaper in the Southeast. The collection includes Sometime Principal prints, Parisian prints of the 1890s and American prints and drawings of the early 20th century. Exhibitions from international museums such as the National Gallery of Scotland, the Palazzo Venezia in Rome, the Rembrandt House and the San Carlos National Museum in Mexico City have all been displayed in the galleries of the museum over the past decade. The museum likewise offers traveling exhibitions formed from its permanent collection to other museums and art institutes around Georgia and the Southeast. Since the early 1970s the Friends of the Georgia Museum of Fine art, a back up group of more than ane,200 members, have hosted fundraisers and openings for exhibitions and accept sponsored exhibitions and educational programs at the museum.

In April 1996, cheers to the efforts of the University of Georgia'south assistants, the Office of Development, the Friends, supporters, patrons, and staff, the Georgia Museum of Art opened a new building on the East Campus of the university as part of the Performing and Visual Arts Complex, which also includes the School of Music, the Performing Arts Center, and, now, the Lamar Dodd School of Art. The opening weekend's events included a lecture past Fourth dimension magazine art critic and author Robert Hughes and a recital by internationally acclaimed soprano and Georgia native Jessye Norman. The museum also held special exhibitions that year to correspond with the Olympic Games, which took place in Atlanta with a few events held in Athens, such as soccer in Sanford Stadium.

The new building opened in 1996 allowed for larger and more aggressive exhibitions and a new emphasis on professional person practices, trends that will continue to hold true in 2011 and beyond. Current manager Eiland has taken a leadership part in organizations such equally the Association of Art Museum Directors, the American Association of Museums, the Southeastern Museums Conference and the Georgia Association of Museums and Galleries. The museum has go a leader, in particular, amidst university museums, and its educational programs take been the nigh tangible instance of the balance information technology strives to reach among state, local and academy audiences as it seeks to fulfill its trifold mission of pedagogy, inquiry and service. The many grants it has received from agencies such as the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as such organizations equally the Henry Luce Foundation and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, have helped it exercise and so.

Scholarship, in particular, flourished with the museum's European initiative and Henry D. Green Center for the Written report of the Decorative Arts, both of which led to biennial symposia that resulted in published volumes of papers. The former also resulted, most recently, in the publication of the "Corpus of Early Italian Paintings in Northward American Public Collections: The Southward," a project of nearly 20 years that will be an invaluable reference piece of work for the current generation of scholars. The Green Center's accent on American decorative arts, specifically those made in or of significance to Georgia, has dovetailed with the goals of the department of American art, something the new galleries brand articulate. Just as connoisseurs initially favored European paintings over works of fine art by Americans, and so, besides, did they prefer European decorative arts to native ones. The collecting and scholarship history of the Georgia Museum of Art prove a series of efforts to correct these prejudices. The Green Heart likewise includes the Green Library, which profoundly expanded the museum'due south library of art books and has served as a model for the archival aspects of the other centers. The Pierre Daura Center was established at the museum in 2002 with a gift from Martha Randolph Daura in honor of her father and joined the Greenish Center and the Jacob Burns Foundation Centre, bringing its own all-encompassing archives of Pierre Daura's papers. These study centers that are a focus of the expanded and renovated building, facilitating research in the humanities and access to the museum's curators.

In 2011, the museum opened an expanded contemporary edifice, with additions and renovations designed by Gluckman Mayner Architects, in the Performing and Visual Arts Circuitous on the university's burgeoning East Campus. New galleries house the permanent drove, and visitors relish an outdoor sculpture garden and expanded foyer.

In 2012, Brenda and Larry Thompson donated 100 works of fine art by African American artists to the collection, mirroring Holbrook's original gift. They likewise established an endowment to fund the position of Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Curator of African American and African Diasporic Art. The Thompsons accept continued to give to the museum (their gifts can be plant in the collections database), and their gift has had a transformative effect, strongly privileging an expansion of the traditional fine art historical canon. They received the Patron of the Yr award from the Georgia Association of Museums and Galleries in 2019.

The museum continues to balance its dual designation every bit an bookish museum with its role as the official state art museum of Georgia. Its schedule is a reflection of the academic report of the history of art and a broader array of pop exhibitions that entreatment to all audiences. From the time Alfred Holbrook starting time loaded works from his art collection in the trunk of his car to share with Georgia's schoolchildren until today, when the museum staff crisscrosses the state of Georgia to present a variety of educational programs, the Georgia Museum of Fine art has made the land a richer and more culturally viable place to alive.