Toledo Museum of Art
Ranked among the country's top fifteen art museums,
the Toledo Museum of Art pleasantly surprises many visitors, who
discover treasures from ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome; paintings
by such Old Masters as El Greco, Rubens, Rembrandt, Gainsborough
and Turner; decorative arts, African and Asian art; and works by
modern masters as Matisse, Picasso, Hopper, and Nevelson.
Edward Libbey, a successful businessman, and his wife
Florence Scott Libbey founded the Toledo Art Museum in 1901 at a
time when Americans were establishing cultural institutions
fostering art, music, and literature to celebrate social and
economic triumphs of the age. Community groups organized public art
museums, which often included schools, some only for drawing and
painting, others also for design and applied arts. Many of these
have become great institutions, and include the Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Art Institute
of Chicago.
The museum's first exhibitions were staged in rented
rooms in a downtown building. The following year, Edward Libbey
underwrote the remodeling of a house on Madison Avenue at 13th
Street, walking distance to the courthouse, library and high
school, to be used for the museum. George Stevens, a poet, amateur
astronomer, painter, storyteller, journalist, and reputed by his
contemporaries to be "the best beloved man in Toledo," shared
Libbey's belief that an art museum could be made as useful to a
community as its public library and public schools. In 1903 Stevens
became the new museum's director. His wife, Nina Spalding Stevens,
who had been educated at the School of Applied Design for Woman,
and the Art Students League in New York, was named museum assistant
director.
The Stevenses threw themselves into building
community support for the museum, encouraging newspapers to write
articles about the museum and its art, speaking to civic groups,
and developing programs with schools. Their goal and accomplishment
was to create an understanding with the community that the art
museum was vital to Toledo's health and welfare. "The first thing I
want to do is remove from the minds of people the idea that The
Toledo Museum of Art is an ultra-exclusive association or an
expensive luxury....It is something to give that all the people
want and we want them all with us," Stevens said.
The collection began with sporadic gifts, and was
initially influenced by the interests of its director and
benefactor. Steven's wide ranging interests focused on the history
of writing, printing, illustration, and binding, thus, the art of
the book because a distinctive feature of Toledo's graphic-arts
collection. Libbey, who owned the Libbey Glass Company, was
determined to build a comprehensive glass collection that would
show the development of the art from antiquity to the present. One
benefactor, Arthur J. Secor, who was also vice president of the
museum's board, is said to have told Stevens, "I watch the
procession of people, men, women, and children passing by my house
on Sunday, a never-ending file up the street to the museum, and I
turn around and look at my collection of paintings and feel
selfish." Secor donated his entire collection, which reached from
17th century Holland to 1890s America, with particular strength in
19th century.
Libbey, who died in 1925, left his collection to the
museum and generous endowment. Under museum directors, Blake-More
Godwin (1927-1958), and Otto Wittman (1959-1977) continued the
efforts to build a collection that would be known for the quality
of its carefully selected works of art. By the time Wittman
retired, the museum had tripled in size. Roger Mandle, director
from 1977 to 1988, was responsible, working with curators, for a
series of outstanding acquisitions in virtually every field in
which the museum collect, with an emphasis on seeking major
twentieth century works. David Steadman became director in
1988.
Since its early years, the museum has actively
showcased music, encouraged by Florence Libbey's own musical
interests. In 1931, a peristyle auditorium was constructed in which
musical programs, including concerts by the Toledo Symphony, have
been presented. In 1995 a new association was forged between the
museum and the symphony. The museum has always had a strong
interest in art education. Since 1919, a part of the museum has
been devoted to an art school, eventually working closely with the
University of Toledo. The university's Center for the Visual Arts
was built adjacent to the museum. Over the past 20 years, major
components of the museum's collections have been published in
scholarly catalogs.
Project documentation several museum brochures and
guides, nine slides, and the catalog, Toledo Treasures, which
provides a short history of the museum.
Originally submitted by: Marcy Kaptur, Representative (9th District).
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The Local Legacies project provides a "snapshot" of American Culture as it was expressed in spring of 2000. Consequently, it is not being updated with new or revised information with the exception of "Related Website" links.
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