The Saint Louis Art Museum is one of the principal U.S. art museums, with paintings, sculptures, cultural objects, and ancient masterpieces from all corners of the world. Its three-story building stands in Forest Park in St. Louis, Missouri, where it is visited by up to a half-million people every year. Admission is free through a subsidy from the cultural tax district for St. Louis City and County. In addition to the featured exhibitions, the museum offers rotating exhibitions and installations. These include the Currents series, which features contemporary artists, as well as regular exhibitions of new media art and works on paper.
The museum was founded in 1879 as the Saint Louis School and Museum of Fine Arts, an independent entity within Washington University in St. Louis. It was housed in a building commissioned by Wayman Crow as a memorial to his son, Wayman Crow Jr., and designed by Boston architects Peabody and Stearns for 19th and Lucas Place (now Locust Street). The school, led by director Halsey Ives, educated two generations of St. Louis artists and craftspeople and offered studio and art history classes supported by a museum collection. After the closing of the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, the museum and school moved from downtown to one of the few permanent remnants of the fair, the Palace of Fine Arts. The building was designed by Cass Gilbert, who took inspiration from the Baths of Caracalla in Rome, Italy. A1 Bed Bug Exterminator St. Louis
Collections
The modern art collection includes works by the European masters Matisse, Gauguin, Monet, Picasso, Corrado Giaquinto, Giambattista Pittoni and Van Gogh. The museum’s particularly strong collection of 20th-century German paintings includes the world’s largest Max Beckmann collection, which includes Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery. The collections of Oceanic and Mesoamerican works, as well as handwoven Turkish rugs, are among the finest in the world. The museum holds the Egyptian mummy Amen-Nestawy-Nakht, and two mummies on loan from Washington University. Its collection of American artists includes the largest U.S.-museum collection of paintings by George Caleb Bingham. The collection contains at least six pieces that the Nazis confiscated from their museums as degenerate. These include Max Beckmann’s “Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery” which came to the museum through a New York art dealer, Curt Valentin, who specialized in Nazi confiscations.
Restaurants and Bars
- Layla is located at 4317 Manchester Ave, St. Louis, MO
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