The Worcester Art Museum ( Worcester Art Museum , abbr. WAM ) is an art museum in the United States located in the city of Worcester . The second in size after the Boston Museum of Fine Arts is a collection of fine art in Massachusetts and all of New England .
| Worcester Art Museum | |
|---|---|
 The inner courtyard of the museum with one of the antique mosaics | |
| Founding date | 1896 |
| opening date | |
| Location | |
| Address |  USA : Worcester , Massachusetts |
| Site | |
Museum History
The museum was organized in 1896 on the initiative of local entrepreneur Stephen Salisbury, who donated land for the construction of the building, and a number of his friends. In 1898, it opened to visitors in a newly constructed building. Initially, the collection mainly consisted of plaster copies of ancient and medieval sculpture, as well as a collection of Japanese prints of 5000 copies, in 1905 after the death of Salisbury, it was supplemented with his collection, which included mainly American painting.
At the same time, in the future, the Worcester Museum considerably replenished its collections thanks to a reasonable stock policy. So, it was the first museum in the United States to acquire the work of Monet and Gauguin . In the 1930s, along with the Louvre , Dumbarton Oaks , the Baltimore Museum of Fine Arts and Princeton University, the Worcester Museum was one of the organizers of the excavations of ancient Antioch , resulting in a number of mosaics in its collection. At the same time, the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Jean near Poitiers in France , built in the 12th century , was acquired and transported to the USA, where it was attached to the main building of the museum.
In 1972, two works by Gauguin, as well as paintings by Picasso and Rembrandt were stolen from the museum, but the theft was discovered and the paintings were returned to the exhibition.
Museum collection
Currently, in addition to ancient mosaics and sculpture, the museum most fully presents the art of impressionists and post-impressionists, including Monet , Renoir , Gauguin , Cezanne , Van Gogh , Picasso , as well as American painting, in particular, the work of Gilbert Stewart , Cole , Homer , Sargent , Bellows . “Chess Players” ( eng. Chess Players ) - a painting by the English artist, art historian and memoirist James Northcoat (1746-1831) depicts, in allegorical form, the aging of a person, his most famous work. Of the earlier paintings, the museum has works by El Greco and Rembrandt ; The painting of the 20th century is represented including Kandinsky , Klein and Pollock . Also kept a large collection of Japanese prints.