Philadelphia Museum of Art
believed to be one of the biggest art museums in
the nation, this gigantic and gorgeous museum is located in
Philadelphia's Fairmount Park, beginning in 1876 in conjunction
with the Centennial Exposition that happened that same year,
although it was originally named the Pennsylvania Museum and
School of Industrial Art. Since the museum was located so far
from the mainstream of the city, it would began construction of
a new building in 1919, after Mayor Thomas B. Smith laid the
cornerstone in a Masonic ceremony on the old reservoir land of
the decommissioned Fairmount Water Works that spanned ten acres
of land, with the first part completed in 19238, in a
quasi-Greek revival design that had been created by Horace
Trumbauer. The beautiful facade is made of Minnesota dolomite,
and the pediment that faced the parkway is adorned with
magnificent sculptures created by C. Paul Jennewein that depicts
Greek gods and goddesses; with an eerie collection of griffins
that had been adopted as symbols of the museum in the 1970s. The
stupendous collections contain over 225,000 works, with the
museum housing some 200 galleries that span 2000 years, and no
one of those galleries is devoted to pre-Columbian, Roman or
Greek artworks, because of an early agreement between the museum
and the University of Pennsylvania. Through this agreement
though, the university loaned the museum its exceptional Chinese
porcelain collection, and they in turn would loan the university
its outstanding Roman, Egyptian and pre-Columbian works;
although the museum does retain a few significant pieces for its
own special exhibitions. The museum will host fifteen to twenty
special exhibitions each year, welcoming over 800,000 people,
although some of the bigger and more recognized artists'
exhibitions will draw more, like the Paul Cezanne exhibit that
drew 548,000 people itself or the Salvador Dali show that
welcomed 370,000 visitors. The museum also includes the Rodin
Museum, other historic sites and the Perelman Building, which
showcase the creative achievements of the western world since
the first century AD and those of Asia since the third
millennium BC.
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