Lowe Art Museum


The Lowe Art Museum, in Coral Gables, a Miami suburb in Miami-Dade County, is a visual arts museum. It opened in 1950 and is operated by the University of Miami. It was originally established by a gift from philanthropists Joe and Emily Lowe. At the time it opened, it was the first art museum in South Florida. The museum has an extensive collection of art with permanent collections in Greco-Roman antiquities, Renaissance, Baroque, 17th- and 19th-century European art, 19th-century American Art, and modern art. The museum's national and international works come from Latin America, Africa, Asia, Native America, Ancient Americas, and the Pacific Islands. It also has a large collection of glassworks including creations by Robert Arneson, Jun Kaneko and Christine Federighi. There are also glassworks by Pablo Picasso, William Morris, Emily Brock, Harvey Littleton, Erwin Eisch, and Ginny Ruffner in the permanent collection.
The permanent collection includes works by: Lippo Vanni, Sano di Pietro, Lorenzo di Bicci, Lorenzo di Credi, Vincenzo Catena, Francesco Bacchiacca, Bernardino Fungai, Adrian Isenbrandt, Jacob Jordaens, Jusepe de Ribera, El Greco, Francisco Goya, Thomas Gainsborough, Paul Gauguin, Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Frank Stella, Knox Martin, and Duane Hanson. There are also Modern works of Art by Roy Lichtenstein, Sandy Skoglund, Purvis Young, Louise Nevelson, Julian Stanczak and Enrique Montenegro in the permanent collection.
The Lowe Art Museum is served by the Miami Metrorail at the University Station.

General

The Lowe Art Museum is one of the most important art museums in Miami, and one of the most important in the south of Florida.
The museum is located within the University of Miami complex, located in Coral Gables, a city southwest of Downtown Miami in Miami-Dade County.
The museum's collections include pieces ranging from classical archeology to contemporary art, with important pieces of Renaissance and Baroque art and of Asian and Native American art.
41,000 visitors visited the Lowe Art Museum in 2011, 6,500 of which were students.

History and donations

The history of the museum starts in 1950 with the first big donation by Joe and Emily Lowe. The museum opened to the public in 1952.
In 1956 Alfred I. Barton donated the important nucleus of Native American art, and in 1954 the museum was designated the sole heir of Florida of a part of the famous collection of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, which brought to the museum a nucleus of 41 works of works of Baroque and Renaissance art, which have become, the most important nucleus of the museum.
In 1984 Robert M. Bischoff donated 531 pieces of his collection of ancient American art.
In the span of more than twenty years, the collection of Asian art was created with the contributions of Stephen Junkunc III, resident of Chicago, who usually stayed in Miami in the winter.
The most recent donations to mention include the collections of glass and ceramics by collectors Myrna and Sheldon Palley, exhibited in the Palley Pavilion inside the museum starting from 2008, and the collections of South American devotional images by the couple Joseph and Janet Shein exhibited in the museum for the first time in 2012.
On loan, extended since 1988, are instead the paintings by the Cintas Foundation, which includes important works of Spanish art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by authors such as El Greco, Murillo, Goya and Ribera.

Exhibition halls

The collection is divided into thematic rooms, dedicating a single room for each theme or artistic current in the collection. Currently it includes about 14 rooms, plus the Palley Pavilion, dedicated to the glass collection, and the outdoor garden of contemporary art sculptures.

Antiquities

The Antiquities room, one of the smallest, is the first that the visitor encounters on his journey through the museum. Here there are exhibited vases, ceramics, metal objects, sculptures and marble bas-reliefs of the period and both Roman and Greek origins, dated between the first millennium BC and the 4th century A.D.

Renaissance and Baroque

The Renaissance room preserves the paintings that include the European works of the late sixteenth century and the Baroque period between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries.
There are views, religious works, portraits and engravings that include Italian, French and Flemish authors. Among the artists to remember Francesco Guardi, Tintoretto, Lucas Cranach the Elder and Jacob Jordaens

Early Renaissance

In the Early Renaissance room, there are tables and gold bases, above all of Italian origin, dated between the first half of the 14th century. and the fifteenth century
Among the authors to be mentioned Lippo Vanni, Cozzarelli, :it:Francesco da Rimini|Francesco da Rimini, Lorenzo di Credi, Antonio da Correggio, Sano di Pietro, Dosso Dossi and Andrea del Sarto.

17th — 20th Century American and European

In this room, European and American artists from the 17th and 20th century are grouped together. The large temporal and artistic space that the collection of the room proposes has suggested a thematic exhibition of the works, dividing them into five categories: Still-life , Landscape , Face & form , Abstraction and Narrative . In comparison, works by internationally renowned artists are brought together in the hall, certainly to remember the Spaniards Goya, Murillo, Jusepe de Ribera and El Greco, the impressionists and post impressionists Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley and Paul Gauguin, the English Thomas Gainsborough to the contemporary Fernando Botero and the South American abstractionists José Bedia and Carlos Alfonzo.

African

This room offers an important collection of wooden masks and furnishings, ceramics, jewels and ceremonial objects dating from 500 AD in the first half of the XX century coming from all over Africa.
There is also a polychrome wooden mask from Ancient Egypt.

Asian

Also in this case the room contains an important collection of works from all over Asia. There is a vast collection of Chinese ceramics, but the collection also includes sculptures, costumes, metal objects, jewels and wooden devices from Japan, Korea, India and South-East Asia.

Pacific Island

Exposed in the room are fabrics and ceremonial objects from the Pacific Ocean islands, especially from the islands of the Melanesia region, dated between the 19th and the 20th century.

Native American

Representing Native American populations are wicker objects, costumes, fabrics, sculptures and ceramics created by Native Americans, including some pieces in Spanish colonial style, created from 1492 to today.
In particular, the collection focuses on pieces dated between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Ancient American

This room exhibits archaeological artefacts from the Mayan, Inca and Chimu populations from the two Americas, including architectural elements, jewels, metal and ceramic objects, created from 2500 BC until 1492 AD
The ceramics Maya and a metallic disc decorated with embossing of the civilization Chimu, dated 900-1460 AD

Contemporary

The long hall dedicated to the contemporary art collection closes the museum itinerary.
Focused on 20th century American art, it presents installations, paintings, photographs and sculptures.
Among the noteworthy artists are certainly Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella, Duane Hanson, Deborah Butterfield, María Martínez-Cañas and :es:Tatiana Parcero|Tatiana Parcero.

Palley Pavilion

Opened on 1 May 2008, the pavilion houses the vast collection of glass and artistic ceramics.
Most of the collection was donated by Myrna and Sheldon Palley, but has since expanded from other generous donations.
The construction of the pavilion, of about 4000 square feet, was also funded by the Palley couple Myrna and Sheldon, with a donation of $1.7 million.

Focus Gallery

Two rooms inside the museum, one at the beginning of the path and one in the middle of the museum itinerary, are aimed at temporarily displaying the museum's works preserved in the warehouses or to give visibility to the new donations.

Special Exhibitions

Two large rooms, at the end of the museum itinerary, are instead dedicated to the temporary exhibitions that the museum organizes annually.

Works

Renaissance and Baroque

Francesco Guardi
Jacopo Robusti known as Tintoretto
Vincenzo Catena
Lucas Cranach the Elder
Lippo Vanni
Jacob Jordaens
Adriaen Isenbrandt
Giuseppe Maria Crespi
Lorenzo di Credi
Andrea del Sarto
Antonio da Correggio
Ambrogio Bergognone

17th - 20th Century American and European

Dominikos Theotokopoulos known as El Greco
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
Thomas Gainsborough
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes
Paul Gauguin
Claude Monet
Albert Bierstadt
André Masson
Fernando Botero
Carlos Alfonzo
José Bedia
Frank Stella
Duane Hanson
Deborah Butterfield
Tatiana Parcero
Sandy Skoglund