Founded in 1951, the Birmingham Museum of Art today has one of the finest collections in the Southeast, with more than 17,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, and decorative arts representing a rich panorama of cultures, including Asian, European, American, African, Pre-Columbian, and Native American. Among other highlights, the Museum’s collection of Asian art is considered the finest and most comprehensive in the Southeast, and its Vietnamese ceramics one of the finest in the U.S. The Museum also is home to a remarkable Kress collection of Renaissance and Baroque paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts from the late 13th century to c.1750, and the 18th-century European decorative arts include superior examples of English ceramics and French furniture.

The Birmingham Museum of Art is owned by the City of Birmingham and encompasses 3.9 acres in the heart of the city’s cultural district. Erected in 1959, the present building was designed by architects Warren, Knight and Davis, and a major renovation and expansion by Edward Larrabee Barnes of New York was completed in 1993. The facility encompasses 180,000 square feet, including a splendid outdoor sculpture garden.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE PERMANENT COLLECTION

AFRICAN ART — The Museum’s growing collection of nearly 2,000 objects is derived from the major culture groups of sub-Saharan Africa and dates from the 12th century to the present. The collection features fine examples of figure sculpture, masks, ritual objects, furniture and household and utilitarian objects, textiles, ceramics and metal arts, with an Egyptian false door, Yoruba mask, Benin bronze hip pendant, divination portrait of a king from Dahomey.

AMERICAN ART — Spanning the late 18th through mid-20th century, the Museum’s collection of American painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts features paintings by Gilbert Stuart, Childe Hassam, and John Singer Sargent; sculptures by Hiram Powers and Frederic Remington; and important decorative pieces by Tiffany Studios and Frank Lloyd Wright. Considered one of the three most important American landscape paintings in an American museum in the SouthU.S., the Museum’s Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California (1865) by Bierstadt was recently chosen by The National Endowment for the Humanities as one of 40 American masterpieces that best depict the people, places, and events that have shaped our country and tell America’s story.

ASIAN ART — The Museum’s Asian art collection started with a gift of Chinese textiles in 1951 and today, with more than 4,000 objects, is the largest and most comprehensive in the Southeast. The collection hails from China, Korea, Japan, India, and Southeast Asia, featuring the finest collection of Vietnamese ceramics in the U.S., as well as outstanding examples of Buddhist and Hindu art, lacquer ware, ceramics, paintings, prints, and sculpture. Highlights include a rare Ming dynasty temple wall and Tang dynasty tomb figures from China; Jomon period pottery from Japan; and contemporary works such as “The Grand Residence,” considered by Chinese painter Wu Guanzhong among his most important works. Also, on long-term loan from The Smithsonian Institution is the Vetlesen Jade Collection of 16th- to 19th-century pieces, one of the most important jade collections in the U.S. The Museum has the only gallery for Korean art in the Southeast.

CONTEMPORARY ART — The collection features painting, sculpture, video, photography, works on paper, and installation art that illuminate movements and trends from the 1960s to the present, with prime examples by internationally renowned artists such as Joan Mitchell, Bill Viola, Kerry James Marshall, and Philip Guston, as well as works by a younger generation who are defining the new century. A gallery for the permanent display of Folk Art will be on view from January 2009. The space will feature works by Bill Traylor, Thornton Dial, Alabama’s outstanding quilters, and other self-taught artists.

EUROPEAN ART ― Among the highlights of the European art holdings is the Kress Collection of Renaissance Art, featuring Renaissance and Baroque paintings, sculpture and decorative arts dating from the late 13th century to c.1750, with works by Pietro Perugino, Antonio Canaletto, and Paris Bordone. Other strengths include 17th-century Dutch paintings by Jacob van Ruisdael, Ferdinand Bol, and Balthasar van der Ast; British 18th-century painting, with portraits by Thomas Gainsborough and Thomas Lawrence; and 18th- and 19th-century French paintings by Francois-Hubert Drouais, Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Mary Cassatt, Gustave Courbet, and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.

EUROPEAN DECORATIVE ARTS — One of the foundations of the Museum’s permanent collection, the European decorative arts comprise more than 12,000 objects including ceramics, glass, and furniture dating from the Renaissance to present day. Notable holdings include the only public collection of late 19th-century European cast iron items in the U.S. and the Eugenia Woodward Hitt Collection of 18th-century French art, including furniture of the Louis XIV, XV, and XVI periods, mounted porcelain, gilt bronzes, paintings, and works on paper from the Regénce to the period following the French Revolution. The Dwight and Lucille Beeson Wedgwood Collection is the finest outside England, comprising more than 1,400 objects illustrating the entire production of the Wedgwood factory from its early years through the 19th century.

NATIVE AMERICAN ART — The museum features a large installation of Native American arts. The galleries are organized into four cultural groupings according to region: Eastern Woodlands, Plains, Northwest Coast, and Southwest. Highlights of the collection include a large grouping of fine Navajo blankets and rugs, an extensive collection of Northwest coast art, and important historic and contemporary Pueblo ceramics. There also are excellent examples of Plains beadwork and stunning shaman headdresses.

PRE-COLUMBIAN — The collection features stunning objects from Meso-America, Central America, and the Northern Andes. Highlights from Meso-America include Zapotec ceramics, objects related to the ballgame, Maya figure sculpture, ceramics and jewelry, Aztec stone sculpture, and West Mexican figural tomb sculpture. Cultures of ancient Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Panama are well represented: works include gold jewelry, metates, censors, volcanic stone figure sculpture, and ceramics. Northern Andean objects include Sican ceremonial gold vessels and tumi, ceramics from the Moche, Chimu, Chancay, and Vicus cultures, Incan keros and mummy masks, and Peruvian textiles.

THE CHARLES W. IRELAND SCULPTURE GARDEN — One of the most distinctive spaces for the display of outdoor art in the southeastern United States, this beautiful multi-level sculpture garden features works by artists such as Fernando Botero, Jacques Lipchitz and Auguste Rodin as well as three site-specific artworks commissioned by the Museum: “Lithos II” (1993) by Elyn Zimmerman, a water wall and pool of textured granite blocks set into the curving east wall of the garden, “Blue Pools Courtyard” (1993) by artist Valerie Jaudon, featuring inlaid tile pools, plantings, and brick and bluestone pavers and Sol Lewitt’s “Bands of Color in Various Directions,” commissioned in 2001 in celebration of the Museum’s 50th anniversary.

THE CLARENCE B. HANSON, JR. LIBRARY — Named for Clarence Bloodworth Hanson, Jr., former publisher of The Birmingham News and a Birmingham Museum of Art board member for 24 years, the Museum’s library is one of the most comprehensive art research libraries in the southeastern U.S. Holdings include a broad range of materials including general art reference works, auction catalogues, artists’ files, periodicals, indexes, exhibition catalogs, and databases. The Chellis Wedgwood Collection, the largest and most comprehensive special collection in the world related to Josiah Wedgwood and his manufactures, along with the Beeson rare book holdings, make this the U.S. center for the study of Wedgwood. Among these holdings are letters from John Flaxman and Benjamin West, and Sir William Hamilton’s Collection of Engravings from Antique Vases, known as the Hamilton Folios, the first color-plate books in the history of art.