Grand Rapids Art Museum
The mission of the Grand Rapids Art Museum is to provide a gathering place where people of all ages and backgrounds can enrich their lives through interaction with authentic works of art of the finest quality in a thought-provoking and creative way. In order to nourish and delight the mind and spirit, the Museum collects, conserves, educates and interprets.
Description:
Located in the heart of downtown, the Grand Rapids Art Museum presents exhibitions of national caliber and regional distinction. The museum collection spans Renaissance to modern art, with particular strength in 19th and 20t century paintings, prints and drawings.
History:
In 1910, a City Federation of Women's Clubs charged with promoting Municipal Beauty founded the Art Association of Grand Rapids. Under the leadership of Mrs. Cyrus E. Perkins, a community cultural leader, the committee recommended the establishment of an art collection as a basis for a future art museum. With an initial budget of $444, the Association was able to acquire eleven paintings, appoint Mrs. W.B. Willard, a local artist, the First Director (of Exhibitions), and organize their first art exhibition in January, 1911.
Mrs. Perkins served as President of the Art Association for the next six years. She became a collector of prints and remained an important contributor to the museum's print collection for the next thirty years.
In 1924, with a gift of $50,000 from Mrs. Emily Clark, a wealthy local patron of the arts, the Association purchased a Greek revival home at 230 Fulton Street, and established the Grand Rapids Art Gallery. In 1928, fireproof galleries were added, and in 1930, an auditorium.
In 1938 a museum auxiliary called, "Friends of American Art," was formed to sponsor exhibitions, lectures, and films. That same year, the Gallery transformed its auditorium into an Art Gallery School, where art classes were offered for credit accepted by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Detroit Institute of the Arts. In 1947, the School became part of the University of Michigan extension program. In 1950 a vault for art storage was added to the building, and in 1963 it was renamed the Grand Rapids Art Museum.
In 1957, the Women's Committee was formed to sponsor exhibitions with profits from a museum gift shop. In 1969, Mrs. Lois McBride, wife of then Director Walter McBride, formed a Library Guild to support the growth of the art reference library and organize it in a professional manner. The library was subsequently named McBride Library in honor of Mr. and Mrs. McBride.
In 1969, Alexander Calder's monumental sculpture La Grand Vitesse (Grand Rapids) was installed at Vandenberg Center, an outdoor plaza in the midst of downtown government, banking, and business towers. Now considered one of Calder's best large-scale sculptures, La Grand Vitesse was the first public sculpture in the country to receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Calder visited the city often during the work process and produced several related prints now in the museum collection. In 1973, Sculpture Off the Pedestal was organized by the Women's Committee of the Grand Rapids Art Museum. This innovative exhibition installed contemporary sculpture in public places throughout the city. The exhibition was supported by a grant from the NEA and won regional and national attention. The museum collection includes several maquettes from the exhibition.
With capacity of the museum facility strained, the Board of Trustees initiated a search for a new location, and in 1978, the City of Grand Rapids offered to lease the historic federal building to the museum for $1.00 per year. A $3 million capital campaign, led by John Canepa and John Bissell, provided funds for renovation of three floors of the landmark building. On September 17, 1981, the Grand Rapids Art Museum opened at 155 Division North with Gerald Ford presiding over the celebration.
In 1983, the Grand Rapids Art Museum received its first national accreditation by the American Association of Art Museums. Average attendance during the 1980s was 45,000 visitors annually. In 1991, the museum established an endowment of $400,000 to provide ongoing funds to operate.
In 1987, Arts Alive, a social organization for young people, was organized to expand museum membership. In 1995, in order to recruit men as museum volunteers, the Women's Committee was renamed GRAM Associates. In 1999, the GRAM Associates became part of the Grand Rapids Art Museum Volunteer Association, which administers all areas of museum volunteerism.
In 1997, the museum organized the international exhibition, Perugino, Master of the Italian Renaissance, a sister-city project with Perugia, Italy. The small, scholarly exhibition drew praise and national attention and it marked the return home to Grand Rapids of Peter Secchia, the U.S. Ambassador to Italy. In 1998, the museum organized Mathias Alten: Journey of an American Painter, the first retrospective of Michigan's leading turn-of-the-century painter. In 1999, the museum presented its second international loan exhibition, A Moral Compass: 17th and 18th Century Painting in the Netherlands. In 2001, the museum presented Light Screens: The Leaded Glass of Frank Lloyd Wright. The exhibition contributed to scholarship on Wright and attracted 64,000 visitors, a record attendance for a single exhibition. The museum organized a two-day, two-city symposium on architecture with the Department of Design and Architecture at The Art Institute of Chicago.
In March 2000, the museum received an unqualified re-accreditation from the American Association of Art Museums. The Grand Rapids Art Museum Endowment has grown from $400,000 in 1991 to $1.8 million in 1997. In 1999, the museum received its first acquisition endowment gift designated for American Art 1840-1950. In 2002 the combined operating and acquisition endowment totals $6.6 million.
Today the Grand Rapids Art Museum collection includes over 5,500 works of art: approximately 3,500 works on paper (prints, drawings, photographs), 1,500 works of design and modern craft (furniture, ceramics, glass, metal and textiles), and 500 paintings and sculptures. The collection consists primarily of European Art 1400 to the present, American Art and American Regional Art from 1840 to the present, and works of International Modernism. Leading works in the collection include: Richard Diebenkorn, Ingleside, 1963, one of the artist's definitive early figurative paintings, Pablo Picasso's 1962 Still Life with Cherries and Watermelon, the only existing complete set in eight states, and American paintings of the late 19th and early 20th century.
In 2001, the museum announced a $20 million lead gift from Wege Foundation and acquisition of a site at 101 Monroe Center adjacent to Maya Lin's Ecliptic for a new museum building. A $350,000 grant from the Grand Rapids Community Foundation supported an architect selection process and conceptual design phase for the new building.
The new building is designed to meet LEED certification standards and will be the first newly constructed, LEED certified art museum in the world. The new museum offers greatly expanded gallery spaces, a cafe, and a new education center. The new Grand Rapids Art Museum will open Oct. 5, 2007.
Contact person: Volunteer Coordinator, Volunteer Coordinator, (phone), (email)
Address:
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101 Monroe CenterGrand Rapids, MI 49503(See a map) |
Web Site: http://www.artmuseumgr.org
| Last updated on October 29, 2009 |
