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Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum
The McNay Art Museum in San
Antonio, Texas was the former home of Ohio-born heiress Marion
Koogler McNay, and contains a wonderful collection of works that
include medieval, 19th and 20th century artworks and Renaissance
art. Marion came to San Antonio in 1918, just after her marriage to
Don Denton McNay, who had been activated to duty in Laredo, Texas.
On their way there, the couple stopped at the Menger Hotel in San
Antonio to spend some honeymoon time and were quite impressed with
the area, as it later realized. Don would pass away later that year
from the Spanish flu in the famous epidemic of 1918 that went across
America. She moved back to San Antonio, in 1926, meeting and
marrying well known ophthalmologist Donald T. Atkinson, and bought
her first artwork, a painting by Diego Rivera called Delfina Flores,
the following year. The couple commissioned renown architects San
Antonio Atlee and Robert Ayres to design a 24 room mansion of
Spanish Colonial Revival style, which became the museum's center
piece. Marion kept on purchasing 19th and 20th century American and
European paintings and southwestern artworks from New Mexico. Her
marriage fell apart in 1936, and she went back to using her former
husband's last name. When she passed away in 1950, she donated her
collection of 700 artworks, estate with mansion and 23 acres, as
well as an endowment that would create the museum which would become
the first art museum in the state. The McNay Art Museum opened in
1954, and during the period from 1970 to 1994, the collection
continued to grow, and additions were transformed from the former
rooms of the mansion into an auditorium, storage spaces, areas to
frame the works as well as programs and special events. Today, that
nucleus of McNay's collection has grown to almost 20,000 works of
art that include; the marvelous Tobin Collection of Theater Arts,
medieval and Renaissance art, one of the best collections of
drawings and prints in the southwest and 19th through 21st century
American and European photographs, sculptures and paintings.
Although open for almost half a century, the museum still acquires
great works of art to supplement their wonderful collections,
especially in the 19th and 20th century American and European
sculpture and paintings by such great masters like; Marsden Hartley,
Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse, Auguste Rodin, Pablo
Picasso, Georgia O'Keefe, and Edward Hopper. The meager modern and
contemporary works have grown substantially, with photographs, works
on paper, sculptures and paintings. The works are from the period
after 1945, include many examples of international, national and
regional works, attempting to show the relation between the many
works. The latest acquisitions include works by Paul Feeley, Chakaia
Booker, Sandy Skoglund and Larry Poons. On the grounds of the
magnificent museum, there are beautiful examples of sculpture,
including the works of Alexander Liberman, Joel Shapiro, George
Rickey and Tony Smith; with elegant fountains along the paths and a
marvelous Japanese inspired garden. A fabulous collection of
medieval and renaissance works have been donated by Dr. and Mrs.
Frederic Oppenheimer, which is the only public collection of its
kind in the state, and contains paintings, fragments of the
altarpieces and portraits by the master of Frankfurt, Taddeo de
Bartolo, Jan Gossaert and many pieces of German, French and
Netherlandish sculptures.
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