Figge Art Museum

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The Figge Art Museum

The AIA award-winning^[1] Figge Art Museum opened in Davenport, Iowa on August 6, 2005, and is the re-named successor to the Davenport Museum of Art, which was opened on October 10, 1925, as the first municipal art gallery in the United States. The new building was designed by Stirling Prize winning Modernist British architect David Chipperfield.^[2] The Figge Art Museum gets its name from the V.O. and Elizabeth Kahl Figge Foundation, which donated $13.25 million towards its $48.5 million construction.^[3] The Figge family, a local banking family of Swiss origin, has a long tradition of philanthropy and cultural enrichment.

The first pieces of its collections were donated by Davenport community leader Charles Ficke (1850-1931), a successful lawyer and former mayor, who collected art from around the world. Robert E. Harsche, then Director of the Art Institute of Chicago, reported that to his knowledge no American public art gallery had "started out with so large a number of important paintings as a nucleus."^[4]

1 Art Collection
2 Executive Directors
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Art Collection

The museum has over 4,000 works of art and is best known for its extensive collection of Haitian, Colonial Mexican and Midwestern art, particularly pieces by Thomas Hart Benton, Marvin Cone and Grant Wood, including the only self-portrait Wood ever painted. In 1990, Grant Wood's estate, which included his personal effects and various works of art, became the property of the Figge Art Museum through his sister Nan Wood Graham, the woman portrayed in American Gothic.

The institution also houses a substantial American collection (including works by Albert Bierstadt, James McNeill Whistler, William Merritt Chase, Winslow Homer, Andrew Wyeth, Ansel Adams, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns), European art (including work by artists such as Albrecht Durer, Rembrandt, Claude Lorrain, Francisco Goya, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Toulouse-Lautrec and Pierre-Auguste Renoir), and works from East Asia (with pieces by Hokusai, Hiroshige and Kunisada). As owners of Grant Wood's estate, the museum is also home of the Grant Wood Archives, and received substantial support from the The Henry Luce Foundation for the conservation of these archives.

Its inaugural exhibition, "The Great American Thing: 1915-1935" opened September 17, 2005, and featured major works from early American Modernists.^[5]

The museum is 115,000 square feet (10,683 m²) and is accredited by the American Association of Museums.

[edit] Executive Directors

Dr Sean O'Harrow (formerly of Cambridge University), 2007-
Mr Thomas Gildehaus (interim director, chairman of the Board) 2006-2007
Ms Linda Banks Downs (formerly of the National Gallery of Art), 2003-2006. Downs is currently Executive Director of the College Art Association.