Interior of the museum as sketched in 1913 by Marguerite MartynSaint Louis Art Museum, 2011East Building, the new wing designed by British architect Sir David Chipperfield
The Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM) is one of the principal U.S. art museums, with paintings, sculptures, cultural objects, and ancient masterpieces from all corners of the world. Its three-story building stands in Forest Park in St. Louis, Missouri, where it is visited by up to a half million people every year. Admission is free through a subsidy from the cultural tax district for St. Louis City and County.[1]
In addition to the featured exhibitions, the museum offers rotating exhibitions and installations. These include the Currents series, which features contemporary artists, as well as regular exhibitions of new media art and works on paper.[2]
The museum's origins date to 1879,[3] when the Saint Louis School and Museum of Fine Arts was founded as part of Washington University.[4] The nascent museum was housed in a building Wayman Crow commissioned of Boston architects Peabody and Stearns as a memorial to his son, Wayman Crow Jr. The structure was located at 19th and Lucas Place (now Locust Street). The school, led by director Halsey Ives, offered studio and art history instruction supported by a museum collection.
When the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition closed, the museum and school moved from the Peabody-Stearns structure to Cass Gilbert's Palace of Fine Arts building. The building at 19th and Lucas Place rapidly fell into disrepair, and was eventually demolished in 1919.[5]
After the relocation, Director Ives introduced a bill into the General Assembly for an art tax to support museum maintenance.[6] The citizens of Saint Louis approved the bill by a nearly 4-to-1 margin; however, the city's controller refused to distribute the tax as the museum was not recognized as a municipal entity and thus had no right to tax money. The Missouri Supreme Court upheld this decision in 1908. This caused the formal separation of the museum from the university in 1909, a split which was the beginning of three civic institutions:
a newly created, public City Art Museum, to remain in the Palace of Fine Arts, the organization which evolved into the Saint Louis Art Museum;[7] an organizing board was assigned to take control in 1912.[8]
the St. Louis School of Fine Arts, also part of Washington University. In 1905 Ives had been immediately succeeded as director by Edmund H. Wuerpel; as of September 1909 Wuerpel advertised classes at Skinker and Lindell.[10] Wuerpel remained director until his retirement in 1939.[11] The school is now also part of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.
During the 1950s, the museum added an extension to include an auditorium for films, concerts, and lectures. Director Charles Guggenheim's An American Museum (1959) debuted in the new auditorium space as a 50th anniversary event.[12]
In 1971, efforts to secure the museum's financial future led voters in St. Louis City and County to approve the creation of the Metropolitan Zoological Park and Museum District (ZMD). This expanded the tax base for the 1908 tax to include St. Louis County.[13] In 1972, the museum was again renamed, to the Saint Louis Art Museum.[13]
Today, the museum is supported financially by the tax, donations from individuals and public associations, sales in the Museum Shop, and foundation support.[14]
Plans to expand the museum, which existed in the 1995 Forest Park Master Plan and the museum's 2000 Strategic Plan, began in earnest in 2005, when the museum board selected the British architect Sir David Chipperfield to design the expansion; Michel Desvigne was selected as landscape architect. The St. Louis-based firm, Hellmuth, Obata, and Kassabaum (HOK) was the architect of record to work with the construction team.
On November 5, 2007, museum officials released the design plans to the public and hosted public conversations about those plans. A model of the new building was displayed in the museum's Sculpture Hall throughout the construction project. In 2008, citing the declining state of the economy, the museum announced that it would delay the start of the expansion, whose cost was then estimated at $125 million.[15]
Construction began in 2009; the museum remained open.[16][17] The expansion added more than 224,000 square feet (20,800 m2) of gallery space, including an underground garage, within the lease lines of the property. Money for the project was raised through private gifts to the capital campaign from individuals, foundations and corporations, and from proceeds from the sale of tax-exempt bonds. The fundraising campaigned covered the $130-million cost of construction and a $31.2 million increase to the museum's endowment to support incremental costs of operating the larger facility. The expanded facility opened in the summer of 2013.
Collection
The collection of the Saint Louis Art Museum contains more than 34,000 objects dating from antiquity to the present. The collection is divided into nine areas:
The collections of Oceanic and Mesoamerican works, as well as handwoven Turkishrugs, are among the finest in the world. The museum holds the EgyptianmummyAmen-Nestawy-Nakht, and two mummies on loan from Washington University, Padi-menekh and Henut-wedjebu.[20][21] Its collection of American artists includes the largest U.S.-museum collection of paintings by George Caleb Bingham.[22]
The collection contains at least six pieces that Nazis confiscated from their own museums as degenerate.[23] These include Max Beckmann's "Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery" which came to the museum through a New York art dealer, Curt Valentin, who specialized in Nazi confiscations, and Matisse's "Bathers with a Turtle" which Joseph Pulitzer purchased at the Galerie Fischer auction held in the Grand Hôtel National, Lucerne, Switzerland, June 30, 1939.[23][24][25]
In the context of the museum's 2013 expansion, British artist Andy Goldsworthy created Stone Sea, a site-specific work for a narrow space between the old and new buildings. Twenty-five tightly packed, ten-foot-high arches made of native limestone rise in a sunken courtyard. The artist was inspired by the fact that the sedimentary rock was formed when the region was a shallow sea in Prehistoric times.[16]
(November 21, 2014 – April 5, 2015) Scenic Wonder: An Early American Journey Down the Hudson River
(November 21, 2014 – April 5, 2015) Nicholas Nixon: 40 Years of The Brown Sisters
(October 12, 2014 – January 5, 2015) Atua: Sacred Gods from Polynesia
(October 31, 2014 – March 8, 2015) Currents 109: Nick Cave
(September 12, 2014 – February 22, 2015) Calligraphy in Chinese and Japanese Art
(August 1–October 19, 2014) New Media Series—Janaina Tsch¨pe: The Ocean Within
(August 29–November 2, 2014) Louis IX: King, Saint, Namesake
(July 4, 2014 – February 22, 2015) Facets of the Three Jewels: Tibetan Buddhist Art from the Collections of George E. Hibbard and the Saint Louis Art Museum
(February 14–May 9, 2010) African Ceremonial Cloths: Selections from the Collection
Services
The Richardson Memorial Library, a public research library founded in 1915, retains resources that document the Museum’s history, enrich its identity, and inform its collections and programs.[97]
Free guided tours for groups led by trained docents.
Saint Louis Art Museum 2004, Saint Louis Art Museum Handbook of the Collection, Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, Mo.
Saint Louis Art Museum 1987, Saint Louis Art Museum, An Architectural History, Fall Bulletin, Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, MO.
Stevens, Walter B. (ed.) 1915, Halsey Cooley Ives, LL.D. 1847–1911; Founder of the St. Louis School of Fine Arts; First Director of the City Art Museum of St. Louis, Ives Memorial Society, Saint Louis, MO
Visitor Guide (brochure), Saint Louis Museum of Art, 2005.
Washington University in St. Louis, Student Life, 2006, Buried Treasure:University Owned Mummy Kept at Saint Louis Museum.
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