The Palm Springs Art Museum (formerly the Palm Springs Desert Museum) was founded in 1938, and is a regional art, natural science and performing arts institution for

Palm Springs Palm Springs (Cahuilla: ''Séc-he'') is a desert resort city in Riverside County, California, United States, within the Colorado Desert's Coachella Valley. The city covers approximately , making it the largest city in Riverside County by land ...

and the

Coachella Valley , map_image = Wpdms shdrlfi020l coachella valley.jpg , map_caption = Coachella Valley , location = California, United States , coordinates = , width = , boundaries = Salton Sea (southeast), Santa Rosa Mountains (southwest), San Jacint ...

, in

Riverside County, California Riverside County is a County (United States), county located in the southern California, southern portion of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census, the population was 2,418,185, making it the fourth-most ...

, United States.

History

Desert Museum years

The Palm Springs Desert Museum was first housed in 1938 in a small room in La Plaza Arcade on Palm Canyon Drive near 'downtown' Palm Springs. The museum focused on the

Colorado Desert California's Colorado Desert is a part of the larger Sonoran Desert. It encompasses approximately , including the heavily irrigated Coachella and Imperial valleys. It is home to many unique flora and fauna. Geography and geology The Colorado De ...

natural environment and the original local Native Americans, such as the

Cahuilla people The Cahuilla , also known as ʔívil̃uqaletem or Ivilyuqaletem, are a Native American people of the various tribes of the Cahuilla Nation, living in the inland areas of southern California.T. D. A. Cockerell. It then expanded in 1947 into a section of a converted wartime hospital. Folk singer and marine biologist Sam Hinton served as director from 1942 to 1944. The Desert Museum had evolved to reflect the community's growing interest in its natural science and American Indian collections and programs. In 1952 the desert

wildlife reserve A nature reserve (also known as a wildlife refuge, wildlife sanctuary, biosphere reserve or bioreserve, natural or nature preserve, or nature conservation area) is a protected area of importance for flora, fauna, or features of geological or o ...

habitat natural 'open air natural history museum' and

botanical garden A botanical garden or botanic gardenThe terms ''botanic'' and ''botanical'' and ''garden'' or ''gardens'' are used more-or-less interchangeably, although the word ''botanic'' is generally reserved for the earlier, more traditional gardens, an ...

was added, and the name for all was the Palm Springs Desert Museum.

Art museum

The Desert Museum started to transition to an art museum in 1953 when desert landscape paintings by

Carl Eytel Carl Eytel (September 12, 1862 – September 17, 1925) was a German American artist who built his reputation for paintings and drawings of desert subjects in the American Southwest. Immigrating to the United States in 1885, he settled in Palm Sp ...

were donated by Cornelia White, Isabel Chase, and Earl Coffman. A new modern structure was built for the Art Museum component in downtown Palm Springs in 1958, and in 1962 it expanded for an auditorium and new galleries to house

contemporary art Contemporary art is the art of today, produced in the second half of the 20th century or in the 21st century. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a dynamic com ...

exhibitions. Frederick Sleight – anthropologist and executive director – is credited with guiding the transformation. Renowned local architect E. Stewart Williams designed another new building only a few blocks away, in the Modernist architectural style, for the third and present location of the growing museum. It continues as an architecturally dramatic and innovative Art Museum and Annenberg Theater in downtown Palm Springs, at 101 Museum Drive just west of North Palm Canyon Drive at the base of Mt. San Jacinto. When the art museum was established, the desert wildlife reserve museum component became an independent public institution as the Living Desert Museum, now the

Living Desert Zoo and Gardens The Living Desert Zoo and Gardens, formerly the Living Desert Museum, is a non-profit zoo and desert botanical garden located in Palm Desert, Riverside County, California, United States. The Living Desert is home to over 500 animals representing ...

. The Williams-designed building 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 2016. By 2003, the museum found itself in financial difficulty, still constrained by the debt incurred during its 1990s expansion phase. In that year, retired banker Harold J. Meyerman joined the museum board; he became its chairman in 2006 and served until his death in 2015. Under Meyerman, the museum pursued financial stability through steps such as increasing its endowment from $6 million to $15.5 million (and projected to hit $24 million in the near future); reducing staff; and raising fees for local groups using the museum's facilities.

Museum scope

Emphases of the Palm Springs Art Museum developed into three areas: * Art:

sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

, studio

art glass Art glass is a subset of glass art, this latter covering the whole range of art made from glass. Art glass normally refers only to pieces made since the mid-19th century, and typically to those purely made as sculpture or decorative art, with ...

, and architecture archives * Natural Science * Performing Arts Educational programs related to each of the three disciplines were planned, and the new Palm Springs Desert Museum opened to the public in January 1976. The museum expanded again in 1982 with the addition of the Denney Western American Art Wing, the museum was renamed the Palm Springs Art Museum, and classic American western art was added to the collection's fine art emphasis.

Art and natural science

Today the permanent collection consists of more than 24,000 objects. 12,000 objects include fine art, fine art photography, photographic archives, Native American art, Mesoamerican art and artifacts from other cultures. The natural science collections are categorized in geology, biology and archaeology. 12,000 specimens include ceramics, lithics, tools, weapons, minerals, fossils, rocks, casts of fossils, herbaria, mounted invertebrates, preserved amphibians and reptiles, study skins and whole mounts of birds and mammals.

Notable artists

Noted landscape artists with works displayed or curated by the museum include: *

John James Audubon John James Audubon (born Jean-Jacques Rabin; April 26, 1785 – January 27, 1851) was an American self-trained artist, naturalist, and ornithologist. His combined interests in art and ornithology turned into a plan to make a complete pictoria ...

Carl Oscar Borg Carl Oscar (or Oskar) Borg (March 3, 1879 – May 8, 1947) was a Swedish-born painter who settled in the United States and became known for views of California and the SouthWest. Biography Carl Oscar Borg was born into a poor family in Grinstad ...

Alson S. Clark Alson Skinner Clark (March 25, 1876 – March 23, 1949) was an American Impressionist painter best remembered for his landscapes. He was also a photographer, '' plein aire'' painter, art educator and muralist. Early life and education On ...

Edward S. Curtis Edward Sherriff Curtis (February 19, 1868 – October 19, 1952) was an American photographer and ethnologist whose work focused on the American West and on Native American people. Sometimes referred to as the "Shadow Catcher", Curtis travele ...

Nicolai Fechin , birth_date = , birth_place = Kazan, Russia , death_date = , death_place = Santa Monica, California United States , spouse = , known_for = Painting , orientation = , training = Imperial Academy of Arts Kaz ...

Leon Gaspard Leon Schulman Gaspard (2 March 1882 - 21 February 1964) was a Russian Empire-born painter, known for his paintings of indigenous cultures and folk traditions. He tended to paint scenes with throngs of people, and his favorite locations were in s ...

* Philip R. Goodwin * Paul A. Grimm *

Woody Gwyn Woody Gwyn (born 1944, San Antonio, Texas) is an American artist. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. His work is in the New Mexico Museum of Art, Albuquerque Museum, Eiteljorg Museum, and Phoenix Art Museum. He was a 2010 recip ...

* Thomas Hill * Grace Carpenter Hudson *

Frank Tenney Johnson Frank Tenney Johnson (June 26, 1874 – January 1, 1939) was a painter of the Old American West, and he popularized a style of painting cowboys which became known as "The Johnson Moonlight Technique". ''Somewhere on the Range'' is an examp ...

* William Keith * Sydney Laurence * George Montgomery *

Thomas Moran Thomas Moran (February 12, 1837 – August 25, 1926) was an American painter and printmaker of the Hudson River School in New York whose work often featured the Rocky Mountains. Moran and his family, wife Mary Nimmo Moran and daughter Ruth too ...

Edgar Alwin Payne Edgar Alwin Payne (1 March 1883 – 8 April 1947) was an American painter. He was known as a Western landscape painter and muralist. Early life Payne was born near Cassville, Barry County, Missouri, in the heart of the Ozarks.. Cassville is in so ...

* Agnes Pelton *

Frederic Remington Frederic Sackrider Remington (October 4, 1861 – December 26, 1909) was an American painter, illustrator, sculptor, and writer who specialized in the genre of Western American Art. His works are known for depicting the Western United State ...

Carl Rungius Carl Clemens Moritz Rungius (August 18, 1869 – October 21, 1959) was a leading American wildlife artist. He was born in Germany though he immigrated to the United States and he spent his career painting in the western United States and Can ...

Charles Marion Russell Charles Marion Russell (March 19, 1864 – October 24, 1926), also known as C. M. Russell, Charlie Russell, and "Kid" Russell, was an American artist of the American Old West. He created more than 2,000 paintings of cowboys, Native Americans, an ...

Millard Sheets Millard Owen Sheets (June 24, 1907 – March 31, 1989) was an American artist, teacher, and architectural designer. He was one of the earliest of the California Scene Painting artists and helped define the art movement. Many of his large-scale bu ...

* James Swinnerton * Walter Ufer * Harold Joe Waldrum * Stephen H. Willlard

Performing arts

The intimate 437-seat

Annenberg Annenberg may refer to: * Annenberg (surname) * The Annenberg Foundation, formerly Annenberg/CPB, known for funding educational television and the Annenberg Channel * The USC Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern Calif ...

Theater presents internationally known performers and concert artists in music, dance and theater.

New growth and accreditation

The museum received accreditation from the

American Association of Museums American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

(now known as the American Alliance of Museums) in 1982. The museum building had originally been designed with the possibility of adding a third level. The need for more exhibition space and educational facilities was recognized by the Board of Trustees, noting increased population and tourism in the Coachella Valley, in addition to the museum's growing collections. An expansion project was initiated with a gift of $1.5 million seed money and 132 works of art from the personal collection of designer and art collector Steve Chase. The Steve Chase Art Wing and Education Center, also designed by E. Stewart Williams, opened in November 1996. The expansion included 25,000 additional square feet of art galleries, a mezzanine, a sculpture terrace, four classrooms, two art storage vaults and a 90-seat lecture hall. The entire Palm Springs Museum complex now encompasses , with additional exhibition space in Palm Desert as of March 2012.

Palm Springs Art Museum in Palm Desert

On March 15, 2012, the museum opened a satellite facility in the nearby community of

Palm Desert Palm Desert is a city in Riverside County, California, United States, in the Coachella Valley, approximately east of Palm Springs, northeast of San Diego and east of Los Angeles. The population was 48,445 at the 2010 census. The city has been ...

. The inaugural exhibition was "Rodin to Now", a survey of modern sculpture from the groundbreaking French artist's work, which arguably began the modern epoch in sculpture, through to immediately contemporary works. Contemporary artists whose works have been displayed at the Palm Springs Art Museum in Palm Desert include

Tracey Emin Tracey Karima Emin, Order of the British Empire, CBE, Associate of the Royal Academy, RA (; born 3 July 1963) is a British artist known for her autobiographical and confessional artwork. Emin produces work in a variety of media including drawi ...

Anthony Gormley Sir Antony Mark David Gormley (born 30 August 1950) is a British sculptor. His works include the ''Angel of the North'', a public sculpture in Gateshead in the north of England, commissioned in 1994 and erected in February 1998; ''Another Pl ...

Lino Tagliapietra Lino Tagliapietra (born 1934) is an Italian glass artist originally from Venice, who has also worked extensively in the United States. As a teacher and mentor, he has played a key role in the international exchange of glassblowing processes and te ...

Klaus Moje Klaus Moje (5 October 1936 – 24 September 2016) was a German born, Australian glass artist and educator. Moje was the founding workshop head of the Australian National University (ANU) School of Art Glass Workshop in Canberra, Australia. ...

Richard Marquis Richard "Dick" Marquis (born 1945) is an American studio glass artist. One of the first Americans ever to work in a Venetian glass factory, he became a master of Venetian cane and murrine techniques. He is considered a pioneer of American conte ...

Karen LaMonte Karen LaMonte (born December 14, 1967) is an American artist known for her life-size sculptures in ceramic, bronze, marble, and cast glass. Background LaMonte was born and grew up in Manhattan, New York. In 1990, after she graduated from the Rhod ...

and

Jennifer Steinkamp Jennifer Steinkamp (born December 22, 1958) is an American installation artist who works with video and new media in order to explore ideas about architectural space, motion, and perception. Life and career Born in Denver, Colorado in 1958, St ...

.Klein, Lee (March 15, 2012). "The State of Sculpture at Palm Springs Art Museum", ''NY Arts''.
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References

External links

*
Organizational Profile
–

National Center for Charitable Statistics The National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS) is a clearing house for information about the nonprofit sector of the U.S. economy. The National Center for Charitable Statistics builds national, state, and regional databases and develops st ...

(

Urban Institute The Urban Institute is a Washington, D.C.–based think tank that carries out economic and social policy research to "open minds, shape decisions, and offer solutions". The institute receives funding from government contracts, foundations and pr ...

) {{DEFAULTSORT:Palm Springs Desert Museum, The Art museums and galleries in California Buildings and structures in Palm Springs, California Museums of American art Native American museums in California Natural history museums in California Palm Springs Desert Museums on the National Register of Historic Places National Register of Historic Places in Riverside County, California Institutions accredited by the American Alliance of Museums Art museums established in 1938 1938 establishments in California Tourist attractions in Palm Springs, California Modernist architecture in California E. Stewart Williams buildings