Toledo Museum of Art
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The Toledo Museum of Art is an internationally known art museum located in the Old West End neighborhood of Toledo, Ohio, United States. The museum was founded by Toledo glassmaker Edward Drummond Libbey in 1901, and moved to its present location, a Greek revival building designed by Edward B. Green and Harry W. Wachter, in 1912. The building was expanded twice in the 1920s and 1930s.
The museum contains major collections of glass art and of 19th and 20th century European and American Art, as well as small but distinguished Renaissance, Greek and Roman, and Japanese collections. Notable individual works include Peter Paul Rubens's The Crowning of Saint Catherine, significant minor works by Rembrandt and El Greco, and modern works by Willem de Kooning, Henry Moore, and Sol LeWitt.
A concert hall within the east wing, the Peristyle, is built in a classical style to match the museum's exterior. The hall is the principal concert space for the Toledo Symphony Orchestra. A sculpture garden, containing primarily postwar works (earlier sculptures are on display in the interior) was added in 2001, and runs in a narrow band along the museum's Monroe Street facade.
A Center for the Visual Arts, designed by Frank Gehry, was added in the 1990s; the Center includes the museum's library as well as studio, office, and classroom space for the art department of the University of Toledo. In 2000, architect Kazuyo Sejima was chosen to design a new building, to house the museum's glass collection; the commission was her first in the United States. The Glass Pavilion opened in August 2006 to considerable critical acclaim; in his review for The New York Times, Nicolai Ouroussoff said, "Composed with exquisite delicacy, the pavilion’s elegant maze of curved glass walls represents the latest monument to evolve in a chain extending back to the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles." Ouroussoff commented on the Pavilion's relationship with the Museum's other buildings:
| “ | The Glass Pavilion is part of a loosely knit complex that includes the Beaux-Arts-style art museum here and the University of Toledo’s Center for the Visual Arts, designed by Frank Gehry. With its grand staircase leading up to a row of Ionic columns, the original museum is both a temple to art and a monument to the belief in high culture’s ability to uplift the life of the worker. The new structure’s low, horizontal form fits in this context with remarkable delicacy, as if the architects hesitated to disturb the surroundings. | „ |
The building showcases the Museum's original glass collection in addition to several new works, including one prominent glass sculpture by Dale Chihuly. The Glass Pavilion is the result of the largest public fundraising drive in Toledo's history.
[edit] References
- Ouroussoff, Nicolai. "A Crystal Showcase Reflects a City’s Glass Legacy." The New York Times, August 28, 3006.
- Davis, Ben. "Glass Houses" Artnet Magazine, Aug. 30, 2006.
