Courtesy Joslyn Art Museum
Joslyn Art Museum
Omaha, Nebraska
Omaha’s art museum is named for the Joslyns, a wealthy local family that started the museum as a gift to the city.
“George Joslyn made millions of dollars as a printer in the 1920s,” said Amy Rummel, director of marketing and public relations at the Joslyn Art Museum. “When he passed away, his wife, Sarah, built the museum as a memorial to him. They loved music, art and giving back to the community. It was a gift from her to Omaha.”
Today, the museum is a midsize institution perfectly suited for a two- or three-hour group visit. The permanent collection has about 20 galleries, with pieces ranging across history from antiquity to contemporary art.
“We have wonderful pieces of ancient Greek pottery,” Rummel said. “We have medieval and Renaissance, all the way through 19th-century European and American art. We have impressionist art and a wonderful collection of art of the American West.”
Western art on display includes works by the likes of Frederic Remington, Charles Russell and Thomas Moran. Visitors will also see works by Jackson Pollack, Grant Wood, Claude Monet and Edgar Degas.
“It’s sometimes a little surprising to people that we have those big names,” Rummel said. “We get a lot of feedback that people are shocked by the caliber of the collection and by the beauty of the museum itself. It’s an incredible Art Deco building, full of 37 different kinds of marble.”
Outside of the building, visitors will find two sculpture gardens that include a waterfall, a reflecting pool and a Rodin sculpture. Groups can arrange for tours of the museum and gardens, along with hands-on art activities.
www.joslyn.org
Indianapolis Museum of Art
Indianapolis
With large and diverse holdings, as well as outdoor gardens and an on-site historic estate, the Indianapolis Museum of Art is one of the leading art museums in the Midwest.
“The Indianapolis Museum of Art is actually among the 10 largest and 10 oldest encyclopedic art museums in the United States,” said public relations manager Candace Gwaltney. “That means that we span more than 5,000 years of history, and we have African art, Asian art, American art and contemporary art.”
The museum’s collection includes works by such famous artists as Rembrandt, van Gogh and Picasso. George Seurat and other European neoimpressionist painters are well represented in the collection, and the museum has an entire floor dedicated to contemporary art.
The museum has also recently emerged from several years of renovations, which have allowed it to better display some of its most fascinating subject matter.
“We just reopened our African art collection that is among the finest in the country,” Gwaltney said. “There are more than 300 objects. It’s a lot of objects for everyday living and really beautiful masks and jewelry used in marriage ceremonies and African traditions.”
In addition to checking out the art in the galleries, many groups that visit the museum take tours of the 26-acre Lilly Estate. This 1930s home belonged to an heir to the Lilly pharmaceutical fortune and is now part of the museum complex. Tours feature a walk through the outdoor formal gardens and the historic structure, which has been maintained exactly as it was in the original owners’ time.
Groups can also attend film screenings, lectures and concerts at the museum, or take part in a number of art-making workshops.
Milwaukee Art Museum
Milwaukee
Standing majestically on the banks of Lake Michigan, the Milwaukee Art Museum is one of its home city’s greatest architectural achievements.
“We’re famous for the building that was designed by Santiago Calatrava,” said Kristin Settle, media relations manager for the museum. “It’s a big, white building with wings that move up and down throughout the day.”
Iconic though the structure may be, it’s not the original home of the art museum. This institution started in 1888 (it will celebrate its 125th anniversary next year), and comprises two other buildings in Milwaukee as well.
With so much history, the museum has amassed an impressive collection of more than 30,000 pieces of art. Visitors will find strong exhibits of art from antiquity, 19th-century European and American art, and American contemporary art. Contemporary highlights include a number of installation pieces, such as a life-size sculpture of a janitor and a suitcase suspended over a reflecting pool of water.
The museum is one of the country’s largest repositories for American folk art and has an entire floor dedicated to Western art, with numerous pieces by Georgia O’Keeffe and others.
“The upper level of our museum is something that we’re very proud of,” Settle said. “It’s the Bradley collection, which was donated to the museum in the 1970s. The strength of the collection is post-World War II art. There’s a little bit of everything in there.”
A new education center at the museum offers several opportunities for groups. Among the most interesting is a laboratory where visitors get a behind-the-scenes look at the operations of an art museum, from curating to framing and art preservation.
www.mam.org
