Columbus Museum of Art

The Sessions house and William Monypeny houses, hosting the art museum (left) and Columbus Art School (right)

The Pizzuti Collection

Claude Monet, Weeping Willow, 1918

The CMA was founded in 1878 as the Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts. Beginning in 1919, it was housed in the Francis C. Sessions house, a founder of Columbus Art School (later known as Columbus College of Art and Design (CCAD). Sessions deeded the mansion and property to the art museum, which operated there until 1923. The house was demolished, with the current museum built on its site. The museum's Beaton Hall (administrative offices) includes elements from the entranceway of the Sessions house.[4]

The current building was built on the same site from 1929 to 1931, opening on January 22, 1931. In 1974, a visually unobtrusive structure was added to the rear of the building.[5] The museum building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 19, 1992, under its original name.[6]

The Columbus Museum of Art began a massive reconstruction and expansion in 2007. The first new space opened on January 1, 2011, after 13 months of construction. The space, called the Center for Creativity, is an 18,000 sq ft (1,700 m²) space that includes galleries, gathering areas, and places for workshops that allow visitors to engage in hands-on activities. On October 25, 2015, the new Margaret M. Walter wing opened to the public, adding 50,000 square feet of addition and 40,000 square feet of major renovation to the Museum.[7] The Margaret M. Walter Wing was designed by Michael Bongiorno of the Columbus-based architecture firm DesignGroup.[8] The museum concurrently revealed a new brand identity led by the Columbus, Ohio-based branding agency Blackletter.

In September 2018, the Pizzuti Collection, a museum in the Short North, was donated to the CMA, along with part of its collection. The museum opened as a part of the Columbus Museum of Art that year.[9] The museum and its Pizzuti Collection branch temporarily closed beginning in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[10]

The Columbus Museum of Art is part of the Monuments Men and Women Museum Network, launched in 2021 by the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art.[11]

The 1931 museum building, today known as the Elizabeth M. and Richard M. Ross Building,[8] was designed in the Second Renaissance Revival style by Columbus architects Richards, McCarty and Bulford. It has a concrete foundation, walls of limestone and concrete, and a truncated copper hipped roof. The building is horizontal, two stories high, and has a central structure advanced several feet in front of its two wings. The wings feature large limestone friezes, together known as The Frederick W. Schumacher Frieze or Masters of Art. The work, by Robert Ingersoll Aitken and named after Frederick W. Schumacher, depicts 68 artists from 490 B.C. to 1925 A.D.[5]

The original main entryway consists of three arched portals to the interior. The facade here includes decorative moldings, keystones, bulls-eye medallions, and stone quoins. A frieze hung above the arches, with the name "Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts". A set of sixteen limestone steps leads to the sidewalk, flanked by two Italian-style lamp posts.[5]

The Center for Creativity, on the first floor of the museum, includes a Creativity Lounge, The Studio, The Wonder Room, the Big Idea Gallery, and an Open Gallery.

The permanent collection includes outstanding late nineteenth and early twentieth-century American and European modern works of art. Major collections include the Ferdinand Howald Collection of early Modernist paintings, the Sirak Collection of Impressionist and Expressionist works, the Photo League Collection, and the Philip and Suzanne Schiller Collection of American Social Commentary Art. The Museum houses the largest collections of works by Columbus born artists Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson, Elijah Pierce, and George Bellows.

Highlights include early Cubist paintings by Pablo Picasso and Juan Gris, works by François Boucher, Paul Cézanne, Mary Cassatt, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Edgar Degas, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Edward Hopper, and Norman Rockwell, and installations by Mel Chin, Josiah McElheny, Susan Philipsz, and Allan Sekula.

Sculptures include: Hare on Ball and Claw, Intermediate Model for the Arch, Out of There, The Family of Man: Figure 2, Ancestor II, The Mountain, Three-Piece Reclining Figure: Draped 1975, Two Lines Up Excentric Variation VI, Wasahaban.

The collection can be browsed on the museum's website.[12]

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  Anthony van Dyck, Christian Bruce, 1635
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  Artemisia Gentileschi, David and Bathsheba, c. 1610-1675
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  Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Varvara Naryshkina, 1800
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  Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Raphael and the Baker's Daughter, 1840
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  Rosa Bonheur, The Coal Carriers, 1851
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  Winslow Homer, Haymaking, 1864
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  Albert Bierstadt, Landscape, c. 1867-1869
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  Camille Corot, The Little Bird Nesters, 1873
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  Albert Pinkham Ryder, Spirit of Autumn, 1875
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  Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Madame Henriot 'en travesti' (The Page), 1875–76
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  Paul Cézanne, portrait of Victor Chocquet, 1877
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  John Singer Sargent
  Carmela Bertagna
  Oil on canvas, 1879
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  Mary Cassatt, Susan Comforting the Baby No. 1, c. 1881
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  William Michael Harnett, After the Hunt, 1883
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  Claude Monet, The Mediterranean (Cap d'Antibes), 1888
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  Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Christine Lerolle Embroidering, c. 1895
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  Henri Rousseau, Tiger Hunt, c. 1895
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  Mary Cassatt
  Portrait of a Young Woman, Pastel on paper, 1898
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  Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Girl Asleep, 1905–06
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  Marsden Hartley, Cosmos, Oil on Canvas, 1908–09
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  Rockwell Kent, Men and Mountains, 1909
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  Edward Middleton Manigault - The Rocket, 1909
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  Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Tower Room, Fehmarn, 1913
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  Juan Gris, Glass of Beer and Playing Cards, 1914
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  Marsden Hartley, Pre-War Pageant, 1914
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  Jacques Villon, Portrait de M. J. B. peintre (Jacques Bon), 1914
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  Pablo Picasso, Nature morte au compotier (Still Life with Compote and Glass), oil on canvas, 1914–15
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  George Wesley Bellows, Riverfront No. 1, 1915
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  Charles Burchfield, Twilight Moon, 1916
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  Charles Sheeler, Lhasa, 1916
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  Robert Delaunay, Portuguese Woman, Oil on canvas, 1916
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  William Glackens, Beach Scene, New London," 1918
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  Charles Demuth, The Tower, 1920

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Columbus Museum of Art.

• Official website
• Catalogue of the Art Collection of Mr. F. C. Sessions (1890)