Muscarelle Museum of Art

Muscarelle Museum of Art in 2009
Location within Virginia
Established	1983 (1983)
Location	College of William and Mary Williamsburg, Virginia
Type	Art museum
Accreditation	American Alliance of Museums
Collection size	6,000 objects
Website	muscarelle.wm.edu

37°16′05″N 76°42′57″W / 37.2679526°N 76.7158878°W / 37.2679526; -76.7158878

The Muscarelle Museum of Art is a university museum affiliated with the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. While the Museum only dates to 1983, the university art collection has been in existence since its first gift – a portrait of the physicist Robert Boyle – in 1732. Most early gifts to William & Mary relate to its history or the history of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Gifts of portraiture were the foundation of the early collection and include many First Families of Virginia (FFV) including sitters from the Page, Bolling and Randolph families.^[1]

History

Part of a series on the
Campus of the College of William & Mary
Historic Campus (College Yard) Wren Building Brafferton President's House
Old Campus Alumni House Tucker Hall Blow Hall Ewell Hall Sunken Garden Crim Dell bridge Hearth: Memorial to the Enslaved
New Campus Phi Beta Kappa Memorial Hall Earl Gregg Swem Library Muscarelle Museum of Art Alan B. Miller Hall
Athletic facilities Zable Stadium Albert–Daly Field Jimmye Laycock Football Center Millie West Tennis Facility McCormack-Nagelsen Tennis Center Plumeri Park Kaplan Arena
Other Lake Matoaka Henry C. Wolf Law Library
Related Charles M. Robinson Charles Gillette W. A. R. Goodwin Bodleian Plate Williamsburg Bray School Virginia Institute of Marine Science Richard Bland College
v t e

Throughout the years, gifts of art continued to accumulate including a donation of White Flower by Georgia O'Keeffe given to William & Mary in 1938 by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. This major work in the collection had indiscriminately "decorated" various campus walls, old and new, until it was re-discovered by President Thomas Ashley Graves Jr. in the 1970s. Graves tasked Miles Chappell, from the department of art and art history, to make a college-wide inventory. It was at that time that the immensity and importance of the growing collection was understood and the need for a university museum became apparent.

With the support of numerous alumni, including a major benefactor, Joseph L. Muscarelle (W&M '27) and his wife Margaret, the Carlton Abbott designed Muscarelle Museum of Art opened in 1983 with Glenn D. Lowry as director. In 1987, the second director, Mark Johnson oversaw the expansion of the facility and the first American Alliance of Museums accreditation in 1988. Subsequent accreditations came in 2000 under then-director Bonnie Kelm, and in 2012 under former director Aaron De Groft. David M. Brashear was appointed as interim director in January 2019, and in June 2020 was named as the museum's fifth director.

Current activities

Today the collection numbers over 6,000 works. Of particular note are Colonial American and English seventeenth and eighteenth century portraits; a survey collection of original prints and drawings from the fifteenth through the twenty-first centuries including Japanese prints and a major collection of German Expressionist works by Hans Grohs; and the Jean Outland Chrysler collection of American modern works interpreted in oils, drawings, watercolors, and sculpture. Recent acquisitions include European master works by such artists as Luca Giordano and Luca Forte, historic photographic works by Julia Margaret Cameron, Carleton E. Watkins and Edward S. Curtis, as well as contemporary Native American works by Kay WalkingStick, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Emmi Whitehorse, and Cara Romero.

Plans are underway to renovate and expand the existing museum to create a state of the art facility as part of the Martha Wren Briggs Center for the Visual Arts^[2] designed by world-renowned architects Pelli Clarke & Partners. The expanded Muscarelle Museum of Art will provide additional gallery space for both traveling exhibitions and the permanent collection as well as create additional space for lectures, events, and programming.^[3]

Selected exhibitions