The San Antonio Museum of Art is an art museum in downtown San Antonio, Texas, USA. In the early 1970s, plans were initiated to purchase the historic Lone Star Brewery complex for conversion into the San Antonio Museum of Art and following a $7.2 million renovation, the San Antonio Museum of Art opened to the public in March 1981. The Museum was funded through grants from the Economic Development Administration of San Antonio, and numerous businessmen and foundations.
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History
The Museum is situated on the northern section of the San Antonio Riverwalk. With the opening of the Gloria Galt River Landing in 2009, the Museum now anchors the "Museum Reach" expansion of the celebrated San Antonio Riverwalk.
When the Museum opened it specialized in art of the Americas including pre-Columbian, Spanish Colonial, and Latin American folk art. It also included eighteenth-, nineteenth- and twentieth-century American and European paintings, photography, sculpture, and decorative arts. In 1985, the Museum received collections of Latin American Folk Art formed by former Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller and Robert K. Winn.
In the 1990s the Museum expanded considerably with donations from Gilbert M. Denman, Jr., the addition of the Stark-Willson Collection which established a comprehensive collection of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman art, and a collection of Chinese ceramics from trustees Walter F. and Lenora Brown. The Chinese collection which also included other Asian objects resulted in a 15,000-square-foot (1,400 m2) wing named after them, The Lenora and Walter F. Brown Asian Art Wing, which opened in 2005 is now the largest Museum for Asian art in the southern United States.
In 1991, the 7,000-square-foot (650 m2) Cowden Gallery was opened for changing exhibitions and, in 1994, the 3,000-square-foot (280 m2) Beretta Hops House was renovated to provide a new area for schooling with three main classrooms. In 1998, the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Latin American Art, a 30,000-square-foot (2,800 m2) wing, opened to display Latin American art.
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Collections
The San Antonio Museum of Art'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 San Antonio Museum of Art 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. The Museum also houses an important and rare collection of Greek and Roman sculpture that encompasses portraits, funerary sculpture, and mythological subject.
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 San Antonio Museum of Art 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, the Museum 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.
Hours and admission
General Admission Pricing
Members: Free Adult: $10 Seniors (65+): $7 Students and Military (with ID): $5 Children under 12: FREE
- Please note there may be a surcharge for special exhibitions.
General admission is free to the public Tuesdays from 4-9 p.m. and Sundays from 10 a.m.-12 p.m.
Museum Hours
Tuesday and Friday: 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday: CLOSED
Former streetcar service
From 1982 through 1985, the museum also operated a heritage streetcar service, using an original San Antonio streetcar built in 1913 and nicknamed "Old 300". The all-yellow car operated on a short section of Texas Transportation Company (TXTC) tracks behind the museum. TXTC was an electric railroad, operating trains powered from overhead trolley wires, and its tracks still reached the former Lone Star Brewery complex, in which the Museum was installed in 1981. Streetcar service in San Antonio ended in 1933, but car 300 was preserved at that time by the San Antonio Museums Association. In 1981, volunteers restored car 300 to operating condition as a historical attraction.
Public operation began in October 1982. The car ran twice a day Tuesday through Friday and six times a day on weekends, but budget cuts led to the service's being discontinued at the end of 1985. The 1913 streetcar was placed in storage, being operated (without passengers) a few times a year to keep it in running condition, 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.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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