Figge Art Museum

The Figge Art Museum is a museum of fine arts in Davenport, Iowa. The Figge, as it is colloquially known, houses an encyclopedic collection and serves as the primary art museum for eastern Iowa and western Illinois. As an art resource and collections hub for a variety of higher education programmers, the Figge collaborates closely with several regional universities and colleges (see below).The museum opened on August 6, 2005, as the renamed successor to the Davenport Museum of Art, which opened as the Davenport Municipal Art Gallery on October 10, 1928. The museum's origins can be traced back to the Davenport Art Association, which was founded before February 23, 1878  and relocated to the Bianca Wheeler art studio on November 15, 1889. The Figge Art Museum is one of the country's oldest art institutions and is widely regarded as the country's first municipal art gallery. The Figge received an AIA award.David Chipper field, a Stirling Prize-winning Modernist British architect, designed the new structure. Chipper field received his first architectural commission in the United States. The V.O. and Elizabeth Kahl Figge Foundation donated $13 million toward the $47 million construction of the Figge Art Museum. The Figge family, a Swiss-born local banking family, has a long history of philanthropy and cultural enrichment. The museum's first pieces came from Davenport community leader Charles Ficke (1850-1931), a successful lawyer and former mayor who collected art from all over the world. According to Robert E. Harsche, then-Director of the Art Institute of Chicago, no American public art gallery had "started out with such a large number of important paintings as a nucleus."

 

Art collection of Figge

The museum houses over 4,000 works of art dating from the 16th century to the present day, with a focus on Haitian, Colonial Mexican, and Midwestern art, particularly works by Thomas Hart Benton, Marvin Cone, and Grant Wood, including the only self-portrait Wood ever painted. Through his sister Nan Wood Graham, the woman portrayed in American Gothic, Grant Wood's estate, which included his personal effects and various works of art, became the property of the Figge Art Museum in 1990. A significant American collection (including works by Albert Bierstadt, James McNeill Whistler, William Merritt Chase, Winslow Homer, Andrew Wyeth, Ansel Adams, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Moncho1929, and Jasper Johns) and ), European art (including works by Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt, Claude Lorrain, Francisco Goya, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir Henry Raeburn, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir), and East Asian art (including works by artists such as Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt, Claude Lorrain, Francisco Goya, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir Henry Raeburn (with pieces by Hokusai, Hiroshige and Kunisada). As the owner of Grant Wood's estate, the museum also houses the Grant Wood Archives, which have received significant funding from The Henry Luce Foundation for conservation. The museum houses a significant collection of works by Frank Lloyd Wright, a Midwest-based American architect and designer. The Great American Thing: 1915-1935, its inaugural exhibition, opened on September 17, 2005, and featured major works by early American Modernists.

HOURS: Mondays are closed

 Tuesdays and Wednesdays are open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Thursday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Friday through Saturday 10am - 5pm

Sunday, 12 p.m. - 5 p.m.