Worcester Art Museum

The Worcester Art Museum, abbreviated WAM, displays nearly 38,000 works of art from antiquity to the present day and representing civilizations from all over the world. WAM, which inaugurated in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1898, is one of the country's most prominent art museums. Its collections include some of the greatest Roman mosaics in the country, as well as exceptional European and American art and a large collection of Japanese prints. Since acquiring the John Woodman Higgins Armory Collection in 2013, WAM has also housed the Americas' second biggest collection of weaponry and armour.  In many ways, it was ahead of the curve in the United States, most notably in collecting architecture (the Chapter House, 1932), purchased Monet (1910) and Gauguin (1921) paintings,  introduced photography as an art form (1904).  The Worcester Art Museum also offers a conservation lab and an adult and kids studio art programmer that runs all year.

History

Stephen Salisbury III and a group of friends created the Art Museum Corporation in September 1896 with the goal of creating an art institution "for the benefit of everyone." Salisbury then donated a plot of land on what was previously the Salisbury farm (now fronting Salisbury Street in Worcester, Massachusetts) as well as $100,000 USD to erect a structure designed by Worcester architect Stephen C. Earle. The Rev. Daniel Merriman was the museum's first president when it opened in 1898. The museum's collection at the time was mostly made up of plaster castings of "ancient and

Renaissance" sculptures, as well as a collection of 5,000 Japanese prints, drawings, and books bequeathed to the museum by John Chandler Bancroft, John Bancroft's son. Stephen Salisbury died in 1905, leaving the museum the most of his five-million-dollar legacy. The Worcester Art Museum grew and gradually collected one of the most important art collections in the country, with some of the essential early works donated or leased by artist and collector Helen Bigelow Merriman. Between 1932 and 1939, the Worcester Art Museum collaborated with a group of museums and institutions to fund excursions to the archaeological locations where Antioch formerly stood. Hundreds of complex floor mosaics were unearthed by this network of museums, which included Princeton University, the Musée du Louvre, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and Harvard University's affiliate, Dumbarton Oaks. The Antioch mosaics, as they are now called, were sent to various institutions.

Many mosaics were donated to the WAM, notably the Worcester Hunt, which is presently situated on the floor of the Renaissance Court

The museum was the victim of a big heist of artwork on May 17, 1972. Just before the museum closed, two guys in masks arrived. The two guys took The Brooding Woman and Head of a Woman by Paul Gauguin, Mother and Child by Pablo Picasso, and St. Bartholomew, which was later ascribed to Rembrandt, a collection valued over a million dollars.  Four people were accused with theft and the theft of seven artworks from Deer field Academy's Borden Library.The Higgins Armory

Museum in Worcester closed its doors in 2013, and its renowned collection of arms and Armour was incorporated into WAM's.  A permanent arms and ammunition  A permanent weapons and Armour gallery will open no later than 2023; in the interim, key items from the Higgins collection, as well as Greek, Roman, Asian, and European works of art, are on display in galleries across the museum. The museum is also reconsidering its institutional narrative, harnessing the collection's richness and depth to create a tale that differs from those told by other museums in the neighborhood. The Worcester Art Museum's new mission statement (approved in 2017) serves as the driving concept for this endeavor: "The Worcester Art Museum links individuals, communities, and cultures through the experience of art."

Admission

Members FREE for Institutional Partners' students, professors, and staff

(See the list of members below)

FREE

Adults $18

Seniors (65 and above)

$14 for students with valid ID

Ages 17 and under are free.