The Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute (MWPAI) is a regional fine

arts center An art centre or arts center is distinct from an art gallery or art museum. An arts centre is a functional community centre with a specific remit to encourage arts practice and to provide facilities such as theatre space, gallery space, venues for ...

founded in 1919 and located in

Utica, New York Utica () is a Administrative divisions of New York, city in the Mohawk Valley and the county seat of Oneida County, New York, United States. The List of cities in New York, tenth-most-populous city in New York State, its population was 65,283 ...

. The institute has three program divisions: *Museum of art *Performing arts *School of art

Museum of art

The

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...

of art has a substantial permanent collection of internationally recognized works. They are exhibited in the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute Museum of Art Building. It is an

International-style International style may refer to: * International Style (architecture), the early 20th century modern movement in architecture *International style (art), the International Gothic style in medieval art *International Style (dancing), a term used in ...

building designed by

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

Philip Johnson Philip Cortelyou Johnson (July 8, 1906 – January 25, 2005) was an American architect best known for his works of modern and postmodern architecture. Among his best-known designs are his modernist Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut; the pos ...

and completed in 1960. A model of the building was exhibited in the United States Pavilion at the Brussels' World's Fair of 1958. It is a 60,000 sqft square and supported by eight external ferro-concrete piers, or two on each side. The exterior structural members are clad in

bronze Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals, such as phosphorus, or metalloids such ...

and "black" Canadian

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergro ...

. The windowless cube is set above windowed office areas recessed in a dry moat, giving a "floating" effect. The interior features a two-story central courtyard, illuminated by a skylight, known as the Edward Wales Root Sculpture Court. It also holds an

auditorium An auditorium is a room built to enable an audience to hear and watch performances. For movie theatres, the number of auditoria (or auditoriums) is expressed as the number of screens. Auditoria can be found in entertainment venues, community ...

seating 271. ''Note:'' This includes an
''Accompanying five photographs''
/ref> It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 2010. Next-door is a Victorian-

era An era is a span of time defined for the purposes of chronology or historiography, as in the regnal eras in the history of a given monarchy, a calendar era used for a given calendar, or the geological eras defined for the history of Earth. Comp ...

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian R ...

mansion called '' Fountain Elms'', listed on the

in 1972. It houses the MWPAI

decorative arts ] The decorative arts are arts or crafts whose object is the design and manufacture of objects that are both beautiful and functional. It includes most of the arts making objects for the interiors of buildings, and interior design, but not usual ...

collection. It is connected to the Museum of Art building by an education wing built in 1995. The museum has an extensive collection of European and American art. A highlight of the permanent collection is the first of the two original sets of

Thomas Cole Thomas Cole was an English-born American artist and the founder of the Hudson River School art movement. Cole is widely regarded as the first significant American landscape painter. He was known for his romantic landscape and history paintin ...

's famous series of paintings titled ''

The Voyage of Life ''The Voyage of Life'' is a series of four paintings created by the American artist Thomas Cole in 1840 and reproduced with minor alterations in 1842, representing an allegory of the four stages of human life. The paintings, ''Childhood'', ''Yout ...

'': The second set is at the

National Gallery The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current Director o ...

Washington, DC.

School of Art

The art school was begun 1936, when The Arts Guild of New York City moved its school to a remodeled garage on the ground of the Institute and, under the name of the ''School of Related Arts and Sciences'', began to offer courses in visual arts, the history and philosophy of art, and comparative symbolism. In 1999, MWPAI became a satellite campus of the

Pratt Institute Pratt Institute is a private university with its main campus in Brooklyn, New York (state), New York. It has a satellite campus in Manhattan and an extension campus in Utica, New York at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute. The school was ...

. A program called ''Pratt at Munson-Williams-Proctor'' or PrattMWP allows students to study for two years in

, called a "Foundations Program", before completing their

Bachelor of Fine Arts A Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) is a standard undergraduate degree for students for pursuing a professional education in the visual, fine or performing arts. It is also called Bachelor of Visual Arts (BVA) in some cases. Background The Bachelor ...

degree at

's main campus in

Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

. PrattMWP is accredited by the

National Association of Schools of Art and Design The National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD), founded in 1944, is an accrediting organization of colleges, schools and universities in the United States. The organization establishes standards for graduate and undergraduate degrees ...

Middle States Association The Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools (Middle States Association or MSA) was a voluntary, peer-based, non-profit association that performed peer evaluation and regional accreditation of public and private schools in the Mid-Atla ...

, and

New York State Education Department The New York State Education Department (NYSED) is the department of the New York state government responsible for the supervision for all public schools in New York and all standardized testing, as well as the production and administration o ...

References

External links

Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts InstitutePrattMWP
{{Authority control Museums on the National Register of Historic Places in New York (state) School buildings completed in 1960 Buildings and structures in Utica, New York Arts organizations established in 1919 Museums in Oneida County, New York Art museums and galleries in New York (state) University museums in New York (state) Philip Johnson buildings Arts centers in New York (state) Museums of American art 1919 establishments in New York (state) University art museums and galleries in New York (state) National Register of Historic Places in Oneida County, New York