Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Philadelphia Museum of Art, known locally and colloquially as “The Art Museum”, is among the largest art museums in the United States. It is located at the west end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park. The Museum was established in 1876 in conjunction with the Centennial Exposition of the same year. Originally called the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art, its founding was inspired by the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) in London, which grew out of the Great Exhibition of 1851.
The Museum, at that time housed in the Centennial Exposition’s Memorial Hall, opened its doors to the public on May 10, 1877. While this location was adequate, it was remote from the vast majority of the city’s inhabitants.
Each year the Museum puts on 15 to 20 special exhibitions and is visited by 800,000 people. Some of the larger and more famous special exhibitions, which have attracted hundreds of thousands of people from every state and around the world, include shows featuring Paul Cezanne (in 1996, attracting 548,000, and 2009, still ongoing) and Salvador Dali (in 2005, attracting 370,000).
Widely regarded as a world-class art institution, the Philadelphia Museum of Art includes not only its iconic Main Building, but also the Rodin Museum (also on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway) and several other historic sites. The recently acquired Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building (across the street from the Main Building) opened in 2007 and houses for public display a few of the Museum’s more popular collections. It includes five new exhibition spaces, a sky lit galleria, and a cafe overlooking a landscaped terrace.
In the 18th century, Philadelphia was one of the most important cities in North America and was a center of style and culture.[8] The museum is particularly known for its important collections of Pennsylvania German art, 18th- and 19th-century furniture and silver by early Philadelphia and Pennsylvania craftsmen, and works by prominent Philadelphia artist Thomas Eakins. The museum houses the most important Eakins collection in the world.