Memphis Brooks Museum of Art is an

art museum An art museum or art gallery is a building or space for the display of art, usually from the museum's own Collection (artwork), collection. It might be in public or private ownership and may be accessible to all or have restrictions in place. A ...

Memphis, Tennessee Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the seat of Shelby County in the southwest part of the state; it is situated along the Mississippi River. With a population of 633,104 at the 2020 U.S. census, Memphis is the second-mos ...

. The Brooks Museum, which was founded in 1916, is the oldest and largest art museum in the state of

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...

. The museum is a privately funded nonprofit institution located in

Overton Park :''Overton Park may also refer to the U.S. Supreme Court case, Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe'' Overton Park is a large, public park in Midtown Memphis, Tennessee. The park grounds contain the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis Z ...

Midtown Memphis Midtown Memphis, Tennessee is a collection of neighborhoods to the east of Downtown. Midtown is home to many cultural attractions, institutions of higher education, and noteworthy pieces of architecture. The district is an anchor in Memphis' arts ...

History and structure

The original Beaux-Arts building, a registered U.S. National Landmark designed by

James Gamble Rogers James Gamble Rogers (March 3, 1867 – October 1, 1947) was an American architect. A proponent of what came to be known as Collegiate Gothic architecture, he is best known for his academic commissions at Yale University, Columbia Univer ...

in 1913, was donated by Bessie Vance Brooks in memory of her husband, Samuel Hamilton Brooks. The cylindrical extension, opened in 1955, was designed by Memphis architect Everett Woods. The Brooks’ facilities also include the Brooks Museum Store, Cafe Brooks by City + State, the Holly Court garden, and a grand terrace that overlooks the greens and trees of Overton Park. In 1989, the building was expanded and reoriented by Askew Nixon Ferguson (ANF) Architects &

Skidmore, Owings and Merrill Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) is an American architectural, urban planning and engineering firm. It was founded in 1936 by Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel A. Owings, Nathaniel Owings in Chicago, Illinois. In 1939, they were joined by engineer Jo ...

. The expansion, which doubled the square footage of the existing building, included a new public entrance as well as a three-story gallery space where the old and new buildings join. The facility consists of 29 galleries, art classrooms, a print study room with over 4,500 works of art on paper, a research library with over 5,000 volumes, and an auditorium. The collection has over ten thousand works of art, including paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, and examples of the decorative arts. Of particular note are the Samuel H. Kress Collection of Renaissance and Baroque paintings, the Hugo N. Dixon Collection of Impressionist paintings, the Levy Collection of American prints, the Goodman Book Collection, and the Goodheart Collection of Carl Gutherz paintings, drawings, and archival material. Brooks Museum Memphis TN side entrance

Permanent collection

Paintings in the permanent collection include works by

Italian Renaissance The Italian Renaissance ( it, Rinascimento ) was a period in Italian history covering the 15th and 16th centuries. The period is known for the initial development of the broader Renaissance culture that spread across Europe and marked the trans ...

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

Impressionist Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...

, and 20th-century artists. The Kress Collection is one of numerous collections of paintings distributed by this philanthropist among American museums. The Brooks also has a fine collection of English portraits, including works by

Gainsborough Gainsborough or Gainsboro may refer to: Places * Gainsborough, Ipswich, Suffolk, England ** Gainsborough Ward, Ipswich * Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, a town in England ** Gainsborough (UK Parliament constituency) * Gainsborough, New South Wales, ...

Reynolds Reynolds may refer to: Places Australia *Hundred of Reynolds, a cadastral unit in South Australia *Hundred of Reynolds (Northern Territory), a cadastral unit in the Northern Territory of Australia United States * Reynolds, Mendocino County, Calif ...

Lawrence Lawrence may refer to: Education Colleges and universities * Lawrence Technological University, a university in Southfield, Michigan, United States * Lawrence University, a liberal arts university in Appleton, Wisconsin, United States Preparator ...

, and Romney. There are impressionist works by

Camille Pissarro Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro ( , ; 10 July 1830 – 13 November 1903) was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, St Thomas (now in the US Virgin Islands, but t ...

Renoir Pierre-Auguste Renoir (; 25 February 1841 – 3 December 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Re ...

, and many American impressionists:

Winslow Homer Winslow Homer (February 24, 1836 – September 29, 1910) was an American landscape painter and illustrator, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th-century America and a preeminent figure in ...

, Thomas Hart Benton,

Childe Hassam Frederick Childe Hassam (; October 17, 1859 – August 27, 1935) was an American Impressionist painter, noted for his urban and coastal scenes. Along with Mary Cassatt and John Henry Twachtman, Hassam was instrumental in promulgating Impressioni ...

, and

Robert Henri Robert Henri (; June 24, 1865 – July 12, 1929) was an American painter and teacher. As a young man, he studied in Paris, where he identified strongly with the Impressionists, and determined to lead an even more dramatic revolt against A ...

. The contemporary collection includes paintings by

Kenneth Noland Kenneth Noland (April 10, 1924 – January 5, 2010) was an American painter. He was one of the best-known American color field painters, although in the 1950s he was thought of as an abstract expressionist and in the early 1960s he was though ...

Robert Motherwell Robert Motherwell (January 24, 1915 – July 16, 1991) was an American Abstract Expressionism, abstract expressionist Painting, painter, printmaker, and editor of ''The Dada Painters and Poets: an Anthology''. He was one of the youngest of th ...

Mark Kostabi Kalev Mark Kostabi (born November 27, 1960) is an American artist and composer. Early life Kostabi was born in Los Angeles on November 27, 1960, to Estonian immigrants Kaljo and Rita Kostabi. He was raised in Whittier, California and studied dra ...

and Nancy Graves, plus the nationally known Memphis artist

Carroll Cloar Carroll Cloar (January 18, 1913 – April 10, 1993) was a nationally known 20th-century painter born in Earle, Arkansas, who focused his work on surreal views of Southern U.S. themes and on poetically portraying childhood memories of natural sce ...

. The Brooks Museum also conserves a selection of 19th and 20th century sculpture and decorative arts, including furniture and textiles.

References

External links

Official website
{{authority control Art museums established in 1916 Art museums and galleries in Tennessee Museums in Memphis, Tennessee 1916 establishments in Tennessee

History and structure

Permanent collection

See also

References

External links