San Antonio Museum of Art
Established | 1981 |
---|---|
Location | 200 West Jones Avenue San Antonio, Texas United States |
Coordinates | 29°26′15″N 98°28′56″W / 29.437568°N 98.482089°W |
Director | Emily Neff |
Website | www.samuseum.org |
The San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA) is an art
History
In 1926, the San Antonio Museum Association founded the Witte Memorial Museum with the intentions of collecting various works of art and natural history objects.[2] By the 1970s, the Witte Memorial Museum acquired notable works of art by artists such as Frank Stella, Wayne Thiebaud, and Philip Guston.[2] Due to the growing pace of art acquisitions, Jack McGregor (former director of the San Antonio Museum Association) recommended the board purchase the former Lone Star Brewery complex and split away from the Witte Memorial Museum.[2] SAMA officially opened its doors to the public on March 1, 1981.[2]
In 1985, it received collections of Latin American Folk Art formed by former vice president
The museum is situated on the northern section of the
Collections
The museum's collection of more than 30,000 objects representing 5,000 years of history and culture from every region of the world includes important works from Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities, Asian art, Latin American art, and Contemporary art.
Art of the Ancient Mediterranean World
The museum houses one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of ancient Egyptian, Near Eastern, Greek and Roman art in the southern United States. The Egyptian collection hold objects from the Pre-dynastic through the late Roman and Byzantine periods. It also houses an important and rare collection of Greek and Roman sculpture that encompasses portraits, funerary sculpture, and mythological subjects.
Asian Art
The Asian art collection is housed in the Lenora and Walter F. Brown Asian Art Wing, a 15,000 square foot suite of galleries that opened in 2005. Over the past 70 years, the museum's Asian art collections have grown to become one of the most impressive in the United States, including more than 1,500 works from China, India, Japan, Korea, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tibet, and Vietnam.
Latin American
The museum has one of the most comprehensive collections of Latin American art in the United States. The collection is housed in the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Latin American Art, which opened to the public in 1998. The center offers an overview of artwork from Mexico, Central and South America, and many counties of the Caribbean, and one of the world's most important repositories of Latin American folk art with a collection numbering over 7,000 objects.
Contemporary
A significant portion of the museum's Contemporary collection is devoted to post-World War II American painting and sculpture, including an emphasis on modernist abstraction. In addition, it has always been committed to the collection of Contemporary Texas Art, and it features paintings and sculpture produced by Texas artists form the last 1960s to present day. The collection includes two sculptures by San Antonio-born Bonnie MacLeary.[3]
Former streetcar service
From 1982 through 1985, the museum also operated a
Public operation began in October 1982.[4] The car ran twice a day Tuesday through Friday and six times a day on weekends,[5] but budget cuts led to the service's being discontinued at the end of 1985.[4] The 1913 streetcar was placed in storage, being operated (without passengers) a few times a year to keep it in running condition,[4] until 1990, when it was leased to a company in Portland, Oregon, for use on the Willamette Shore Trolley line there.
The museum continued to be car 300's owner, leasing it to entities in Oregon, but in 2005 it sold the car to the Astoria Riverfront Trolley Association, who had been operating it on a popular heritage streetcar line in Astoria, Oregon, since 1999.[6]
References
- ^ a b San Antonio Museum of Art. "History of the San Antonio Museum of Art". Retrieved October 20, 2014.
- ^ OCLC 810772905.
- ^ "SIRIS – Smithsonian Institution Research Information System". Retrieved 7 March 2016.
- ^ ISSN 1048-3845.
- Modern Tramway, p. 421. UK: Ian Allan Publishing/Light Rail Transit Association.
- The Daily Astorian. Astoria, Oregon. October 11, 2005.