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Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum
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| Location: | Cambridge, Massachusetts |
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| Built: | 1925/1896 |
| Architect: | Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch & Abbott |
| Architectural style: | Georgian Revival |
| Governing body: | Harvard University |
| NRHP Reference#: | 86001282[1] |
| Added to NRHP: | May 19, 1986 |
The Fogg Museum, opened to the public in 1896, is the oldest of Harvard University's art museums. The Fogg joins the Busch-Reisinger Museum and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum as part of the Harvard Art Museums.
The museum was originally housed in an Italian Renaissance-style building designed by Richard Morris Hunt. In 1925, the building was replaced by a Georgian Revival-style structure across Quincy Street, designed by Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch, and Abbott. (The original Hunt Hall remained in Harvard Yard, underutilized until it was demolished in 1974 to make way for new freshman dormitories.[2]) In 2008, the building closed for a major renovation project to create a new museum building designed by architect Renzo Piano that will house all three Harvard art museums in one facility.[3] During the renovation, selected works from all three museums are on display at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum.
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The Fogg Museum is renowned for its holdings of Western paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, photographs, prints, and drawings from the Middle Ages to the present. Particular strengths include Italian Renaissance, British Pre-Raphaelite, and French art of the 19th century, as well as 19th- and 20th-century American paintings and drawings.
The museum's Maurice Wertheim Collection is a notable group of impressionist and postimpressionist works that contains many famous masterworks, including paintings and sculpture by Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Vincent van Gogh. Central to the Fogg's holdings is the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection, with more than 4,000 works of art. Bequeathed to Harvard in 1943, the collection continues to play a pivotal role in shaping the legacy of the Harvard Art Museums, serving as a foundation for teaching, research, and professional training programs. It includes important 19th-century paintings, sculpture, and drawings by William Blake, Edward Burne-Jones, Jacques-Louis David, Honoré Daumier, Winslow Homer, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Auguste Rodin, John Singer Sargent, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler.
Many of the works in the Fogg Museum can be accessed as part of the Harvard Art Museums' online Collection Search, which 250,000 works of art.