Meadows Museum of Art facts for kids
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| Established | 1975 |
|---|---|
| Location | Shreveport, Louisiana, United States |
| Type | Art museum |
| Accreditation | American Alliance of Museums |
| Key holdings | Albrecht Dürer's Triumphal Arch |
| Collections | French Indochina art, Inuit art |
| Collection size | Roughly 1,600+ |
| Founder | Algur H. Meadows |
The Meadows Museum of Art is an exciting art museum located at Centenary College of Louisiana in Shreveport. Its main goal is to collect, protect, and share amazing visual artworks. It's also a super helpful place for students who are learning about art history, making art, or even how to run a museum! Many students get to work there as interns and guides. This museum is the second art museum started by a generous oilman named Algur H. Meadows. The first one is the Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University.
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How the Museum Started
The Meadows Museum of Art opened at Centenary College of Louisiana in 1975. This was a special year because the college was celebrating its 150th anniversary! The museum was made possible by a wonderful gift from Algur H. Meadows, who used to be a student at Centenary.
In 1969, Mr. Meadows bought 360 original artworks from the family of a French artist named Jean Despujols. He paid $250,000 for them. He then gave these artworks to Centenary College to help start this second Meadows Museum. This happened just four years after the first Meadows Museum opened at SMU.
Mr. Meadows also gave $200,000 to the college. This money was used to change the old 1926 Arts Building into a 4,000-square-foot art museum. The Arts Building was designed by a Shreveport architect named Edward F. Neild. Over the years, this building has been used for many things, like classrooms, the college library, and an administration office. Today, it is the Meadows Museum of Art. Later, Mr. Meadows gave another $150,000 to help keep the museum running.
Special Art Collections
Unlike the Meadows Museum at SMU, which received Mr. Meadows' large collection of Spanish art, Centenary's Meadows Museum started with a unique collection. This was the Indochina Collection. It includes paintings and drawings by Jean Despujols, a French artist. He created these works while he was working for the French government in Indochina between 1936 and 1938. Despujols had also been an art professor in France.
His Indochina Collection is very special because Despujols used a realistic style. This means his art accurately shows the different people, cultures, landscapes, and religious practices in an area that is now Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. This region would later be greatly changed by wars. Before coming to Shreveport, the collection was shown in Hanoi and Saigon in 1938. It was also displayed at the Smithsonian Museum in 1950 and the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in 1952. This collection is one of the largest groups of French colonial art that still exists. In 1951, National Geographic Magazine even featured twenty-one paintings from the collection in an article called "Portrait of Indochina." Despujols moved to the United States during World War II and lived in Shreveport, Louisiana, until he passed away.
Willard Cooper, who graduated from Centenary in 1947, came back to the college to be the museum's first art director. He was also an art professor and led the art department at Centenary.
The Meadows Museum Today
Since it first opened, the museum's permanent collection has grown to about 1,600 artworks. The museum has even added traditional Southeast Asian costumes to its Indochina Collection. These are the same kinds of costumes you can see in Despujols' paintings!
Besides the Indochina Collection, the museum also has works by famous artists like George Grosz, Emilio Amero, Mary Cassatt, William Hogarth, and Alfred Maurer. You can also find art by Louisiana artists such as Clyde Connell, Clementine Hunter, and Don Brown. The Meadows Museum of Art also owns one of the rare copies of The Triumphal Arch of Maximilian I. This amazing artwork was created by the Northern Renaissance artist and engraver Albrecht Dürer. The museum also has a large collection of Inuit prints and sculptures.
Learning and Exhibitions
The Meadows Museum of Art doesn't just collect and protect important art. It also hosts temporary art shows and educational programs. These programs help introduce people to many different types of art and to important artists, art historians, and museum experts from other places. Some recent exhibitions have included Sean Starwars, Renegade Printmaker of the South, Mali De-Kalo's Relaying--Testimonies of Motherhood Lost, Poet of the Ordinary: Photographs by Keith Carter, The Dream Series by Marlene Tseng Yu, and Images of Excellence: The O. Winston Link Centennial.
To support its goal of teaching people about art, the museum never charges money to get in. It's a great place for art lovers in the Shreveport community. The Meadows Museum of Art also plays a very important role in helping students learn and grow at Centenary College.
Centenary's Meadows Museum is officially recognized by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM). This is the highest national award a museum can receive in the United States. Being accredited means a museum is excellent. The Meadows Museum first received this award in 1980 and has been re-accredited three times since then. This means it has been recognized for 40 years of museum excellence!
