Cleveland Museum of Art

The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is an art museum in Cleveland, Ohio, located in the Wade Park District on the city's east side, in the University Circle neighborhood. The museum, which is internationally renowned for its significant holdings of Asian and Egyptian art, houses a diverse permanent collection of over 61,000 works of art from around the world.  The museum offers free general admission to the public. It is the fourth-richest art museum in the United States, with a $755 million endowment. It is one of the most visited art museums in the world, with approximately 770,000 visitors per year (2018).

History

Beginnings

The Cleveland Museum of Art was established as a trust in 1913 by Hinman Hurlbut, John Huntington, and Horace Kelley, three prominent Cleveland industrialists.

 The $1.25 million neoclassical, white Georgian Marble, Beaux-Arts building was built on the southern edge of Wade Park.

 Hubbell & Benes, a local architectural firm, designed Wade Park and the museum, with the museum serving as the park's focal point.  The 75-acre (300,000-square-meter) park is named after philanthropist Jeptha H. Wade, who donated a portion of his wooded estate to the city in 1881. On June 6, 1916, Wade's grandson, Jeptha H. Wade II, declared the museum open to the public "for the benefit of all people, forever."

Expansion in the mid to late twentieth century

The northern entrance, which features Marcel Breuer's 1971 addition. The first addition to the building opened in March 1958, doubling the museum's floorspace. Hayes and Ruth, a Cleveland architectural firm, designed this addition on the north side of the original building. They created a new gallery space as well as an art library. The museum expanded once more in 1971, with the opening of the North Wing. The addition designed by modernist architect Marcel Breuer provided angular lines in stark contrast to the flourishes of the 1916 building's neoclassical facade with its stepped, two-toned granite facade. The main entrance to the museum was relocated to the North Wing. The auditorium, classrooms,and lecture halls were also relocated to the North Wing, allowing their original building spaces to be renovated as gallery space. The West Wing, designed by the Cleveland architectural firm Dalton, van Dijk, Johnson, & Partners, was finished in 1983. This resulted in increased library space as well as nine new galleries.

Collections

The Spitzer Cross, dating from the 12th century, is an example of Medieval art.

Stag at Sharkey's by George Bellows, 1909.

La Vie (1903), by Pablo Picasso, is one of the highlights of the museum's Modern European Painting and Sculpture collection. Chinese Art, Modern European Art, African Art, Drawings, Prints, European Art, Textiles and Islamic Art, American Painting and Sculpture, Greek and Roman Art, Contemporary Art, Medieval Art, Decorative Art and Design, Pre-Columbian and Native North American Art, Japanese and Korean Art, Indian and Southeast Asian Art, and Photography are among the 16 departments housed at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Significant works by artists include Olivuccio di Ciccarello, Botticelli, Giambattista Pittoni, Caravaggio, El Greco, Poussin, Rubens, Frans Hals, Gerard David, Goya, J.M.W. Turner, Dal, Matisse, Renoir, Gauguin (The Call), Frederic Edwin Church, Thomas Cole, Corot, Thomas Eakins, Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Picasso, and George Bellows are among the artists represented. The museum has recently added important works by Warhol, Jackson Pollock, Christo, Anselm Kiefer, Ronald Davis, Larry Poons, Leon Kossoff, Jack Whitten, Morris Louis, Jules Olitski, Chuck Close, Robert Mangold, Ching Ho Cheng, Mark Tansey, and Sol LeWitt, among others, to its collection.

Hours

10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays

10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. on Wednesdays and Fridays

Monday is a holiday.