Norton Museum of Art
this outstanding art museum in West Palm Beach,
Florida houses a marvelous collection of more than 5000 works
that focus on Chinese, American and European art along with
photography and contemporary art. The Norton Museum of Arts
began in 1941, when Ralph Hubbard Norton and his wife, Elizabeth
Calhoun Norton donated their excellent collection to begin the
nucleus of what is now this great collection of works. Norton
had been the head of a Chicago based company of Acme Steel
Company and decided to retire in West Palm Beach, whereupon he
would share his magnificent collection of sculpture and
paintings. The museum is housed in a art deco/neoclassical
structure designed by Marion Sims Wyeth, striving to preserve
the magnificent articles of the past for the future. It would
enjoy an enlargement when it received a large 45,000 square foot
expansion when the Gail and Melvin Nessel Wing; which increased
the size of the museum's space to 122,500 square feet. It
enlarged the museum's gallery space by 75% and offered more room
for their permanent collections. That wing houses 14 galleries,
a glass ceiling installation that had been created by Dale
Chihuly, a three story atrium that had been designed to increase
the visualization of the collections, an enclosed courtyard that
would hold numerous social and educational events and a
cantilevered spiral staircase. Their marvelous American
collection contains some 1200 works that spans works on paper,
paintings and sculptures that include works by Charles Marion
Russell, Mary Cassatt, Jackson Pollock, George Wesley Bellows,
Stuart Davis and others. Works in the European collection were
created by such notables as Peter Paul Rubens, Claude Monet,
Mariotto Albertinelli, Paul Gauguin, Lucas Cranach the Elder,
Edgar Degas, Ferdinand Bol, Gustave Courbet, Luca Giordano,
Jean-Baptiste Greuze and Sir Joshua Reynolds.
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