Walters Art Museum
Walters Art Museum main entrance
Established	1934
Location	Mount Vernon Baltimore, Maryland
Type	Art museum
Director	Gary Vikan
Website	Official Website

Sculpture Garden of the Walters Art Museum

The Walters Art Museum, located in Baltimore, Maryland's Mount Vernon neighborhood, is a public art museum founded in 1934. The museum's collection was amassed substantially by two men, William Thompson Walters (1819–1894), who began serious collecting when he moved to Paris at the outbreak of the American Civil War, and his son Henry Walters (1848–1931), who refined the collection and rehoused it in a palazzo building on Charles Street which opened in 1909. Upon his death, Henry Walters bequeathed the collection of over 22,000 works and the original Charles Street palazzo building to the city of Baltimore, “for the benefit of the public.” The collection touches masterworks of ancient Egypt, Greek sculpture and Roman sarcophagi, medieval ivories, illuminated manuscripts, Renaissance bronzes, Old Master and 19th-century paintings, Chinese ceramics and bronzes, and Art Deco jewelry.

In 2000, the Walters Art Gallery changed its name to the Walters Art Museum to reflect its image as a large public institution. The following year, the museum reopened its largest building after a dramatic three-year renovation. The Walters Art Museum is where the Archimedes Palimpsest is on loan from a private collector for conservation and spectral imaging studies.

Starting Sunday, October 1, 2006, the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Walters Art Museum began having free admission year-round as a result of grants given by Baltimore City and Baltimore County.^[1] In 2012 the museum released nearly 20,000 of its own images of the collections on a Creative Commons license, and collaborated in their upload to Wikimedia Commons,^[2] one of the largest and most comprehensive such releases made by any museum.

Coordinates: 39°17′48″N 76°36′58″W / 39.29667°N 76.61611°W / 39.29667; -76.61611

Permanent collection[link]

Ancient art[link]

The Walters' collection of ancient art includes examples from Egypt, Nubia, Greece, Rome, Etruria and the Near East. Highlights include two monumental 3,000 pound statues of the Egyptian lion-headed goddess Sekhmet, the Walters Mummy, alabaster reliefs from the palace of Ashurnasirpal II, Greek gold jewelry including the Greek bracelets from Olbia on the shores of the Black Sea, the Praxitelean Satyr, a large assemblage of Roman portrait heads, a Roman bronze banquet couch and marble sarcophagi from the tombs of the prominent Licinian and Calpurnian families.

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  Sumerian male worshiper, c.2300 BC

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  Greek aryballos in the Form of Head of an African, 480-430 BC

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  Portrait bust of Livia, wife of Augustus, c.35 BC

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  Al Fayum mummy portrait, Roman Egypt, c.175 AD

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  The "Rubens Vase", an agate hardstone carving of c. 400

Art of the ancient Americas[link]

In 1911, Henry Walters purchased almost 100 gold artifacts from the Chiriqui region of western Panama, creating a core collection of ancient American art. Through gifts of art and loans, the museum has added works, mostly in pottery and stone, from Central and South America, including pieces from the Mesoamerican Olmec, Aztec, and Maya cultures, as well as the Moche and Inca peoples of eastern South America.

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  Ecuadorian Human Figure Effigy, stone, date unknown

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  Whistle in the form of a dancing figure from Colima, Mexico, pottery, 300BC-200AD

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  Nayarit, Mexico, pottery Seated Woman, 300BC-200AD

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  Mayan head in stucco, AD 550-850

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  Panamanian gold frog pendant, AD 700-1520

Asian art[link]

Highlights of the Asian art collection assembled by William and Henry Walters include Japanese arms and armor, Chinese and Japanese porcelains, lacquers, and metalwork. Among the museum's outstanding works of Asian art is a late 12th- or early 13th-century Cambodian bronze of the eight-armed Avalokiteshvara, a T’ang Dynasty earthenware camel, and an intricately painted Ming Dynasty wine jar. The museum owns the oldest surviving Chinese wood-and-lacquer image of the Buddha (late 6th century AD), which is exhibited in a gallery dedicated solely to this work.

The museum now houses one of the largest and finest collections of Thai bronze, scrolls, and banner paintings in the world.

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  Detail of Ming dynasty wood and laquer Guanyin

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  15th century Tibetan ritual knife and chopper

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  19th century Thai illustration of Vessantara Jataka, Ch 10

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  18th century Chinese jar with dragon

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  Hashiguchi Goyo, Woman in Blue Combing Her Hair, woodblock print, Japan, 1920

Islamic art[link]

Islamic art in all media are represented at the Walters. Among the highlights are a 7th-century carved and hammered silver bowl from Iran; a 13th-century candlestick made of copper, silver, and gold from Mamluk Egypt; 16th-century mausoleum doors decorated with intricate wood carvings in a radiating star pattern; a 17th-century silk sash from Moghul India; and a 17th-century Turkish tile with an image of the Great Mosque of Mecca. The museum owns an array of Islamic manuscripts. These include a 15th-century Koran from northern India, executed at the height of the Timurid empire; a 16th-century copy of the Khamsa by Amir Khusraw, illustrated by a number of famous artists for the emperor Akbar; and a Turkish calligraphy album by Sheik Handullah al Amasi, one of the greatest calligraphers of all time. Walters Art Museum, MS W.613 contains five Mughal miniatures from a very important Khamsa of Nizami made for Akbar; the rest are in London.

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  Early Qu'ran page in Kufic script, 9th century

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  Mamluk candlestick base, c1240, brass with silver, gold and copper inlays

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  The Death of Darius, Mughal miniature from Akbar's Khamsa of Nizami, 1595, MS W.613

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  Detail of 18th century Turkish rifle

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  Inside of Qu'ran cover, 19th century, sub-Saharan Africa

Medieval art[link]

Henry Walters assembled a collection of art produced during the Middle Ages in all the major artistic media of the period, and this now forms the basis of the Walters' medieval collection, for which the museum is best known internationally. One of the best collections of medieval art in the United States, the museum's holdings include examples of metalwork, sculpture, stained glass, textiles, icons, and other paintings. The collection is especially renowned for its ivories, enamels, reliquaries, early Byzantine silver, post-Byzantine art, illuminated manuscripts and the largest and finest collection of Ethiopian Christian art outside Ethiopia.

The Walters' medieval collection features unique objects like the Byzantine agate Rubens Vase that belonged to the painter Rubens (accession no. 42.562) and the earliest surviving image of the Virgin of Tenderness, an ivory carving produced in Egypt in the sixth or seventh century (accession no. 71.297). Sculpted heads from the royal Abbey of St. Denis are rare surviving examples of portal sculptures that are directly connected with the origins of Gothic art in 12th-century France (accession nos. 27.21 and 27.22). An ivory casket covered with scenes of jousting knights is one of only about a dozen such objects to survive in the world (accession no. 71.264).

Many of these works are on display in the museum's galleries, but works from the medieval collection are also frequently included in special exhibitions, such as Treasures of Heaven, an exhibition about relics and reliquaries that was on view at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Walters Art Museum , and the British Museum in 2010/2011.

Works in the medieval collection are the subject of active research by the curatorial and conservation departments of the museum, and visiting researchers frequently make use of the museum's holdings. In-depth technical research carried on these objects is made available to the public through publications and exhibitions, as in the case of the Amandus Shrine (accession no. 53.9), which was featured in a small special exhibition titled The Special Dead in 2008/2009.

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  Hunnish set of horse trappings, 4th century

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  French Gothic ivory Box Lid with a Tournament, 14th century (Walters 71274)

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  Leaf from Barbavara Book of Hours, Milan c. 1440

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  15th century Nottingham alabaster panel of the Resurrection of Christ

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  German chandelier, red deer antler and wood, 15th century

Renaissance and Baroque art[link]

The collection of European Renaissance and Baroque art features holdings of paintings, sculpture, furniture, ceramics, metal work, arms and armor. The highlights include Hugo van der Goes' Donor with Saint John the Baptist, Heemskerck’s Panorama with the Abduction of Helen Amidst the Wonders of the Ancient World, the Madonna of the Candelabra, from the studio of Raphael, Veronese’s Portrait Of Countess Livia da Porto Thiene and her Daughter Porzia, El Greco's Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata, Bernini's bozzetto of Risen Christ, Tiepolo’s Scipio Africanus Freeing Massiva, and The Ideal City attributed to Fra Carnevale.

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  The Ideal City (c. 1480-1484) attributed to Fra Carnevale

• Madonna of the Candelabra Raphael.jpg

  Madonna of the Candelabra (c. 1513) by Raphael.

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  Leaf from Book of Hours, French Renaissance, 1524

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  The Battle of Pavia, engraved on rock crystal for a Medici Cardinal by Giovanni Bernardi, 1530s

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  Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Scipio Africanus Freeing Massiva, c. 1720

Eighteenth and nineteenth century art[link]

William and Henry Walters collected works by both late 19th century French academic masters and Impressionists. Highlights of the collection include Odalisque with Slave by Ingres (a second version), Claude Monet’s Springtime, Alfred Sisley's panoramic view of the Seine Valley, and Édouard Manet’s realist masterpiece, The Café Concert. Henry Walters was particularly interested in the courtly arts of 18th-century France. The museum’s collection of Sèvres porcelain includes a number of pieces that were made for members of the court at Versailles. Portrait miniatures and the examples of goldsmiths' works, especially snuffboxes and watches are displayed in the Treasury along with some exceptional 19th- and early 20th-century works. Among them are examples of Art Nouveau jewelry by René Lalique, jeweled objects by the House of Fabergé, including two Russian imperial Easter eggs, and precious jewels by Tiffany and Co. The Walters’ collection presents an overview of 19th-century European art, particularly art from France. From the first half of the century come major paintings by Ingres, Géricault, and Delacroix. As a result of his stay in Paris with his family during the Civil War, William Walters developed a keen interest in contemporary European painting. He either commissioned directly from the artists or purchased at auctions major works by the Barbizon masters, including Millet and Rousseau, the academic masters Gérôme and Alma-Tadema, and the modernists Monet, Manet, and Sisley.

• Raby Castle, the Seat of the Earl of Darlington.jpg

  Raby Castle, the Seat of the Earl of Darlington (1817) by Joseph Mallord William Turner.

• The Catskills Durand.jpg

  The Catskills (1859) by Asher Brown Durand.

• Springtime Claude Monet.jpg

  Springtime (1872) by Claude Monet.

• At the Café Edouard Manet.jpg

  At the Café (ca. 1879) by Edouard Manet.

• The Terrace at Saint-Germain, Spring Alfred Sisley.jpg

  The Terrace at Saint-Germain, Spring (1875) by Alfred Sisley.

Museum buildings[link]

The Charles Street building[link]

Henry Walters’ original gallery was designed by William Adams Delano and erected between 1904 and 1909. Its exterior was inspired by the Renaissance-revival style Hôtel Pourtalès in Paris and its interior was modeled after the 17th-century Collegio dei Gesuiti (now the Palazzo dell’Università) built by the Balbi family for the Jesuits in Genoa. The arts of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, French decorative arts of the 18th and 19th centuries, and manuscripts and rare books are now exhibited in this palazzo-like building.^[3]

The Centre Street building[link]

Designed by the Boston firm of Shepley, Bullfinch, Richardson, and Abbott, in the “Brutalist” style prevailing in the 1960s, this building opened in 1974. It was substantially altered in 1998-2001 by Kallmann McKinnell and Wood Architects, to allow for a four-story glass atrium, a suspended staircase, a café and an enlarged museum store and a library. The ancient, Byzantine, medieval, Ethiopian, and 19th-century European collections are housed in this building as is the museum’s conservation laboratory, which is one of the oldest in the country.^[4]

Hackerman House[link]

This Greek-revival mansion, designed by John Rudolph Niernsee and erected between 1848 and 1850 for Dr. John Hanson Thomas, was long regarded as the most “elegant” house in Mount Vernon Place. Among the Thomas’s distinguished guests were the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII, and General Kossuth, the Hungarian freedom fighter. Since 1991, the house has been devoted to the Walters’ holdings of Asian art.^[5]

Select works from the museum collection[link]

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  9th century Irish ring brooch

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  Ethiopian miniature of John the Evangelist, Gunda Gunde Gospel Book, c. 1540

• Walters Gilbert Stuart George Washington.jpg

  George Washington (1825) by Gilbert Stuart

• The Sailor's Wedding.jpg

  "The Sailor's Wedding" (1852) by Richard Caton Woodville

• The Church at Eragny Pissarro.jpg

  The Church at Eragny (1884) by Camille Pissarro

• Iris Corsage Ornament Tiffany.jpg

  Iris Corsage Ornament (c. 1900) by Tiffany and Company.

• Margot in Blue Cassatt.jpg

  Margot in Blue (1902) by Mary Cassatt.

• Pansy Brooch Lalique.jpg

  Pansy Brooch ( ca. 1903) by René Lalique

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  Rose Trellis Imperial Easter Egg (1907) by Peter Carl Fabergé.

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  Renaissance gallery

See also[link]

• William Thompson Walters
• Henry Walters
• William Henry Rinehart
• Archimedes Palimpsest
• Baltimore Museum of Art

Notes[link]

Further reading[link]

• Gruelle, R. B., Collection of William Thompson Walters (Boston 1895)
• Bushnell, S. W., Oriental Ceramic Art Collections of William Thompson Walters (New York 1899)

References[link]

• The Walters Art Gallery, Guide to the Collections, 1997, Scala Books, ISBN 0-911886-48-6
•  "Walters Collection". Encyclopedia Americana. 1920. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Walters Art Museum

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Collections of the Walters Art Museum

• Walters Art Museum official website
• Archimedes Palimpsest Project Web Page
• Walters Art Museum (entrance) on Google Street View
• Collaboration Between Walters Art Museum and Wikimedia Commons

This article uses bare URLs for citations. Please consider adding full citations so that the article remains verifiable. Several templates and the Reflinks tool are available to assist in formatting. (Reflinks documentation) (November 2011)

The Louvre in Paris, France, is one of the world's largest museums and it is the most visited art museum in the world.

National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.

An art gallery or art museum is a building or space for the exhibition of art, usually visual art. Museums can be public or private, but what distinguishes a museum is the ownership of a collection. Paintings are the most commonly displayed art objects; however, sculpture, decorative arts, furniture, textiles, costume, drawings, pastels, watercolors, collages, prints, artists' books, photographs, and installation art are also regularly shown.^[1] Although primarily concerned with providing a space to show works of visual art, art galleries are sometimes used to host other artistic activities, such as performance art, music concerts, or poetry readings.

Types of galleries[link]

The Gallery of Cornelis van der Geest, Willem van Haecht, 1628. A private picture gallery as an early precursor of the modern museum.

The term is used for both public galleries, which are non-profit or publicly owned museums that display selected collections of art. On the other hand private galleries refers to the commercial enterprises for the sale of art. However, both types of gallery may host traveling exhibits or temporary exhibitions including art borrowed from elsewhere.

Galleries in museums[link]

The rooms in museums where art is displayed for the public are often referred to as galleries as well, with a room dedicated to Ancient Egyptian art often being called the Egyptian Gallery, for example.

Contemporary art gallery[link]

The term contemporary art gallery refers usually to a privately owned for-profit commercial gallery. These galleries are often found clustered together in large urban centers. Smaller cities are usually home to at least one gallery, but they may also be found in towns or villages, and remote areas where artists congregate, e.g. the Taos art colony and St Ives, Cornwall.

Contemporary art galleries are usually open to the general public without charge; however, some are semi-private. They usually profit by taking a portion of art sales; from 25% to 50% is typical. There are also many non-profit or collective galleries. Some galleries in cities like Tokyo charge the artists a flat rate per day, though this is considered distasteful in some international art markets. Galleries often hang solo shows. Curators often create group shows that say something about a certain theme, trend in art, or group of associated artists. Galleries sometimes choose to represent artists exclusively, giving them the opportunity to show regularly.

A gallery's definition can also include the artist cooperative or artist-run space, which often (in North America and Western Europe) operates as a space with a more democratic mission and selection process. Such galleries typically have a board of directors and a volunteer or paid support staff that select and curate shows by committee, or some kind of similar process to choose art that typically lacks commercial ends.

Vanity galleries[link]

A vanity gallery is an art gallery that charges fees from artists in order to show their work, much like a vanity press does for authors. The shows are not legitimately curated and will frequently or usually include as many artists as possible. Most art professionals are able to identify them on an artist's resume.^[2]

Visual art not shown in a gallery[link]

Works on paper, such as drawings, pastels, watercolors, prints, and photographs are typically not permanently displayed for conservation reasons. Instead, public access to these materials is provided by a dedicated print study room located within the museum. Murals generally remain where they have been painted, although many have been removed to galleries. Various forms of 20th century art, such as land art and performance art, also usually exist outside a gallery. Photographic records of these kinds of art are often shown in galleries, however. Most museum and large art galleries own more works than they have room to display. The rest are held in reserve collections, on or off-site.

Similar to an art gallery is the sculpture garden (or sculpture park), which presents sculpture in an outdoor space. Sculpture installation has grown in popularity, whereby temporary sculptures are installed in open spaces during events like festivals.

Architecture[link]

The architectural form of the art gallery was established by Sir John Soane with his design for the Dulwich Picture Gallery in 1817. This established the gallery as a series of interconnected rooms with largely uninterrupted wall spaces for hanging pictures and indirect lighting from skylights or roof lanterns.

The late 19th century saw a boom in the building of public art galleries in Europe and America, becoming an essential cultural feature of larger cities. More art galleries rose up alongside museums and public libraries as part of the municipal drive for literacy and public education.

In the middle and late 20th century earlier architectural styles employed for art museums (such as the Beaux-Arts style of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City or the Gothic and Renaissance Revival architecture of Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum) were increasingly replaced with more modern styles, such as Deconstructivism. Examples of this trend include the Guggenheim Museum in New York City by Frank Lloyd Wright, Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Centre Pompidou-Metz by Shigeru Ban, and Mario Botta's redesign of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Some critics argue that these galleries are self-defeating, in that their dramatic interior spaces distract the eye from the paintings they are supposed to exhibit.

Cultural aspects[link]

Many art museums throughout history have been designed with a cultural purpose or been subject to political intervention. In particular National Art Galleries have been thought to incite feelings of nationalism. This has occurred in both democratic and non-democratic countries, although authoritarian regimes have historically exercised more control over administration of art museums. Ludwig Justi was for example dismissed as director of The Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery) in Berlin in 1933 by the new Nazi authorities for not being politically suitable.^[3]

Since the 1970s a number of political theorists and social commentators have pointed to the political implications of art museums and social relations. Pierre Bourdieu, for instance, argued that in spite the apparent freedom of choice in the arts, people's artistic preferences (such as classical music, rock, traditional music) strongly tie in with their social position. So called Cultural capital is a major factor in social mobility (for example, getting a higher-paid, higher-status job). The argument states that certain art museums are aimed at perpetuating aristocratic and upper class ideals of taste and excludes segments of society without the social opportunities to develop such interest. The fine arts thus perpetuate social inequality by creating divisions between different social groups. This argument also ties in with the Marxist theory of mystification and elite culture.^[4]

Furthermore, certain art gallerias, such as the National Gallery in London and the Louvre in Paris are situated in buildings of considerable emotional impact. The Louvre in Paris is for instance located in the former Royal Castle of the ancient regime, and is thus clearly designed with a political agenda. It has been argued that such buildings create feelings of subjugation and adds to the mystification of fine arts.^[5]

Notable art museums[link]

Online museums[link]

Museums with major web presences[link]

Most art museums have only limited online collections, but a few museums, as well as some libraries and government agencies, have developed substantial online catalogues. Museums, libraries and government agencies with substantial online collections of prints, photographs, and other works on paper include:

• Library of Congress, prints (C19 on) and photographs collection (several million entries).^[6]

• The British Museum has 1,969,197 objects available online, of which 606,348 have one or more image (as at August 2011).^[7]

Museums, libraries and government agencies with substantial online collections with more focus on paintings and sculpture include:

• Boston Museum of Fine Arts, with over 330,000 works, most with images. Good for prints.[1]
• Fine Art Museums of San Francisco, with over 85,000 works
• Harvard Art Museums, with over 81,000 works, about half of which have very low resolution images.^[8]
• Louvre, with over 80,000 works in various databases, with a large number of images, as well as another 140,000 drawings.^[9]
• National Gallery of Art, with over 108,000 works catalogued, though with only 6,000 images.^[10]
• (French) The Mona Lisa Database of French Museums — Joconde *(from the French Ministry of Culture)

Online art collections[link]

There are a number of online art catalogues and galleries that have been developed independently of the support of any individual museum. Many of these are attempts to develop galleries of artwork that are encyclopedic or historical in focus, while others are commercial efforts to sell the work of contemporary artists.

A limited number of such sites have independent importance in the art world. The large auction houses, such as Sotheby's and Christie's maintain large online databases of art which they have auctioned or are auctioning. Bridgeman Art Library serves as a central source of reproductions of artwork, with access limited to museums, art dealers and other professionals or professional organizations.

Folksonomy[link]

There are also online galleries that have been developed by a collaboration of museums and galleries that are more interested with the categorization of art. They are interested in the potential use of folksonomy within museums and the requirements for post-processing of terms that have been gathered, both to test their utility and to deploy them in useful ways.

The steve.museum is one example of a site that is experimenting with this collaborative philosophy. The participating institutions include the Guggenheim Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

See also[link]

• Art exhibition
• Artist cooperative
• Artist-run initiative
• Artist-run space
• Arts centre
• Black cube art museum
• Contemporary art gallery
• List of most visited art museums in the world
• List of notable museums and galleries
• National Gallery (disambiguation)
• Vanity gallery
• Virtual museum

References[link]