Dayton Art Institute
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The Dayton Art Institute (DAI) is a museum of fine arts in Dayton, Ohio, USA.
Founded in a downtown mansion in 1919 as the Dayton Museum of Fine Arts, the museum moved to its own building in 1930. Modeled after the Italian Renaissance Villa d'Este, near Rome, and the Villa Farnese at Caprarola, Italy, the new building overlooks downtown Dayton from across the Great Miami River.
The museum was later renamed The Dayton Art Institute as an indication of the growing importance of its school in addition to the museum. The nearly 60,000 square-foot building is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The museum's collection contains more than 20,000 objects spanning 5,000 years. In September, 2005, the Museum became one of eleven galleries in the US to host The Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt, the largest collection of ancient artifacts ever to travel outside Egypt.
