Grand Rapids Art Museum
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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.
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[edit] Early Years (1900 - 1930)
Nationally known as a manufacturing center for fine quality wood furniture, Grand Rapids had a population of 275,000 in 1900. In 1908 Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Meyer May House at 450 Madison Street for a Michigan department store executive; and in 1909 Alice Roosevelt Longworth arrived in Grand Rapids to lay the cornerstone for a new Federal building. It opened in 1911 and housed law courts and a central post office.
Mrs. Perkins served as President of the Art Association for the next six years, attending national conferences of the American Federation of the Arts and working to establish contacts with Art organizations in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis. She became a collector of prints and remained an important contributor to the museum's print collection for the next thirty years.
In 1912 the Grand Rapids Art Association played a leading role in forming the Michigan Federation of the Arts. For the next twelve years, the Association held exhibitions in a variety of downtown locations, including St. Cecilia Music Society and the Ryerson Public Library.
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.
[edit] 1930 - 1960
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 1949, Gerald R. Ford of Grand Rapids was sworn into the House of Representatives where he served for the next 25 years. By 1950, the population of the Grand Rapids area had grown to 550,000. 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 the McBride Library in honor of Mr. and Mrs. McBride.
[edit] 1960 - 1990's
In 1969 Alexander Calder's monumental sculpture La Grand Vitesse (The Great Swiftness) 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.
In 1973, Gerald Ford was appointed Vice President of the United States following the resignation of Spiro Agnew. In August 1974, following the resignation of Richard Nixon, he became the 38th President of the United States. In Grand Rapids with the capacity of the museum facility strained, the Board of Trustees initiated a search for a new location. 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 its present location 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 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.
Loan exhibitions and collaborations with the Yale Center for British Art, National Gallery of Canada, and Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum continue to raise the museum's regional and national profile. Museum attendance increased from 50,000 visitors annually in 1997 to over 100,000 in 2002. The current population of the greater metropolitan area of Grand Rapids is 1.2 million.
[edit] 2000 - Present
In March 2000 the museum received an unqualified re-accreditation from the American Association of Art Museums. The Grand Rapids Art Museum Endowment grew 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 2006 the combined operating and acquisition endowment totals $12 million.
Today the Grand Rapids Art Museum collection includes over 5,000 works of art: approximately 3,500 works on paper (prints, drawings, photographs), 1,000 works of design and modern craft (furniture, ceramics, glass, metal and textiles), and 700 paintings and sculptures. The collection consists primarily of European Art 1500 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 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.
GRAM's search committee sought an emerging architect to create a concept design for the new museum. Munkenbeck and Marshall, a London-based firm, was selected in June 2002. As the design development progressed with Alfred Munkenbeck, GRAM leadership determined that the project needed an emerging architect with established museum design experience. GRAM retained Kulapat Yantrasast, partner in the recently established Los Angeles-based firm Workshop Hakomori Yantrasast (wHY), to develop the new facility design consistent with the art museum's needs and priorities. Kulapat began to study the project in late 2003 and commenced work in march 2004. Construction of the new museum began in September 2004.
Since the museum's beginning in 1910, there have been twelve Directors of the Grand Rapids Art Museum. Mr. Walter McBride, who served sixteen years from 1954-1970, is the longest term Director. Current Director, Celeste Adams, has served since 1997. Current President of the Board of Trustees is Michael Ellis.
[edit] Expansion Update
The new Grand Rapids Art Museum will be located at 101 Monroe Center in downtown Grand Rapids. The 125,000 square foot facility is located adjacent to an urban park designed by Maya Lin. Construction will be completed in Spring 2007.
A $75 million Capital Campaign, now at 85% completion, includes the $55 million museum facility, site acquisition and operating endowment.
