Harvard Art Museums facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
Harvard Art Museums

The original Fogg Art Museum is one of the main entryways to the Harvard Art Museums
Established	1983 (1983) (by merger of 3 earlier museums)
Location	32 Quincy Street Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
Type	Art museum
Collection size	~250,000
Architect	Renzo Piano
Owner	Harvard University
Public transit access	Harvard (MBTA Red Line)

The Harvard Art Museums are a group of three amazing art museums that are part of Harvard University. They include the Fogg Museum, the Busch-Reisinger Museum, and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum. These museums came together in 1983 to form one big institution.

The museums hold about 250,000 art pieces! These artworks come from all over the world, like Europe, North America, Asia, and the Middle East. They also cover many different time periods, from ancient times to today. The main building has lots of space for showing art, classrooms, and even labs where they fix and study artworks. About 43,000 square feet are just for showing off the art!

Cool Renovations and New Spaces

The bright atrium at 32 Quincy Street, a main entrance to the Harvard Art Museums
(view as a 360° interactive panorama)

In 2008, the main building of the Harvard Art Museums closed for a big makeover. During this time, some of the art was shown at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum.

The famous architect Renzo Piano designed the new look for the main building. He made it so all three museums could be in one place. The renovation added 40% more space for galleries. It also added a cool glass roof shaped like a pyramid! From the street, you can barely see the new glass roof, so the old building's look is mostly kept.

The new building, which opened in November 2014, has six levels of galleries, classrooms, and study areas. This means more of the 250,000 art pieces can be seen and studied by visitors and students.

Fogg Museum: A Look at Western Art

The original entryway of the Fogg Museum of Art, now part of the Harvard Art Museums

The Fogg Museum is the oldest and largest part of the Harvard Art Museums. It first opened its doors to the public in 1896.

Fogg Museum's History

The Fogg Museum wasn't just built to show art. It was also a place for teaching and studying art! The first building had classrooms, a library, and even a collection of slides and photos of artworks. Later, in 1925, a new building was built on Quincy Street.

Amazing Art Collections at the Fogg

The Fogg Museum is famous for its collection of Western art. This includes paintings, sculptures, photos, and drawings from the Middle Ages up to today. You can find beautiful art from the Italian Renaissance, British Pre-Raphaelite artists, and French art from the 1800s. There are also many American paintings and drawings from the 1800s and 1900s.

One special part of the collection is the Maurice Wertheim Collection. It has many famous impressionist and post-impressionist artworks. You can see masterpieces by artists like Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Vincent van Gogh.

Another very important collection is the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection. It has over 4,000 pieces of art! This collection helps shape what the Harvard Art Museums teach and research. It includes important 19th-century art by William Blake, Edward Burne-Jones, Jacques-Louis David, Winslow Homer, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Auguste Rodin, John Singer Sargent, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler.

The museum also has paintings by many other famous artists from different periods:

• Late Medieval Italian paintings by artists like Simone Martini and Pietro Lorenzetti.
• Flemish Renaissance paintings by artists such as Jan Provoost.
• Italian Renaissance paintings by Fra Angelico, Sandro Botticelli, and Domenico Ghirlandaio.
• French Baroque paintings by Nicolas Poussin.
• Dutch Master paintings by Rembrandt and Jan Steen.
• American paintings by Gilbert Stuart, John Singer Sargent, Jackson Pollock, and Kerry James Marshall.

In 2021, the Harvard Art Museums started a project called "ReFrame." This project aims to show more diverse art and tell more stories. They want to bring out artworks that haven't been seen much and show existing art in new ways. This helps tell the stories of people who might not have been highlighted before.

Gallery

Busch–Reisinger Museum: Art from German-Speaking Countries

The Busch–Reisinger Museum started in 1903 as the Germanic Museum. It got its new name in 1920 when it moved to Adolphus Busch Hall. The museum is named after brewer Adolphus Busch and his son-in-law Hugo Reisinger.

This museum is special because it's the only one in North America focused on art from German-speaking countries. It has art from Germany, Austria, and other parts of Central and Northern Europe. You can see art from different periods and styles, like Austrian Secession art, German expressionism, and abstract art from the 1920s.

The museum also has one of the largest collections of items from the Bauhaus design school. This school was very important for modern design. Other cool things to see include medieval sculptures and art from the 1700s. There's also modern art from German-speaking Europe by artists like Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer, Gerhard Richter, and a huge collection of works by Joseph Beuys.

The Busch–Reisinger Art Museum has paintings by artists such as Lovis Corinth, Max Liebermann, Gustav Klimt, Edvard Munch, Max Ernst, and Max Beckmann. It also has sculptures by Käthe Kollwitz and Ernst Barlach.

From 1921 to 1991, the museum was in Adolphus Busch Hall. This Hall still has the museum's first collection of medieval plaster casts (copies of sculptures). It also hosts concerts with its Flentrop pipe organ. In 1991, the Busch–Reisinger Museum moved to the new Werner Otto Hall.

Recently, the Busch–Reisinger has had interesting exhibitions. In 2019, "The Bauhaus and Harvard" celebrated 100 years since the Bauhaus school started. Many students and teachers from Bauhaus came to Harvard after the school closed in Germany, and they continued their amazing work there.

Arthur M. Sackler Museum: Asian and Ancient Art

The Sackler Building now houses classrooms and offices, but no longer public exhibition spaces

The Arthur M. Sackler Museum opened in 1985. It was located across the street from the original Fogg Museum building. The building was designed by British architect James Stirling and named after its main donor, Arthur M. Sackler. When it first opened, the Sackler building also had offices for art history teachers and a library for art images. Today, it still has the History of Art and Architecture Department and the Media Slide Library.

Sackler Museum's Collections

This museum has very important collections of Asian art. It has one of the biggest collections of ancient Chinese jades outside of China! You can also see Japanese surimono (special prints), Chinese bronzes, Buddhist sculptures, and ceramics from China and Korea. There are also Japanese artworks on paper and lacquer boxes.

The museum's ancient Mediterranean and Byzantine collections are also impressive. They include art from Greece, Rome, Egypt, and the Near East. You can find Greek vases, small bronze statues, and coins from the ancient world. The museum also has artworks on paper from Islamic lands and India, like paintings, drawings, and beautiful calligraphy. It's especially strong in Rajput art and Islamic ceramics from the 700s to the 1800s.

The Sackler Building's Design

The Sackler building was meant to be an addition to the Fogg Museum. Its design by James Stirling got a lot of attention worldwide. Stirling designed the building to fit in with the other buildings nearby, which he called "an architectural zoo."

The original plan included a long "connector" bridge that would link the Sackler building to the Fogg Museum across the street. This bridge would have had galleries and a way for visitors and staff to move between the buildings. It even had a large round window, called an oculus, high above the street.

However, this connector was never built because people in the neighborhood and local politicians didn't want it. Later, the big renovation of the Fogg Museum building made the idea of a connector unnecessary. You can still see two large concrete pillars in front of the Sackler building that were supposed to support this bridge.

In 2013, the Sackler building's future was unclear because its art collection moved to the renovated Fogg building. In January 2019, after some updates, the Sackler building reopened. It is now used for classes and research, and no longer has public art exhibits. It still has a large lecture hall in its basement for educational events.

See also

• National Register of Historic Places listings in Cambridge, Massachusetts
• List of university museums in the United States