Tacoma Art Museum

Identity area

Type of entity

Organization

Authorized form of name

Tacoma Art Museum

Parallel form(s) of name

Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules

Other form(s) of name

  • TAM

Identifiers for corporate bodies

Description area

Dates of existence

History

The Tacoma Art Museum was developed out of the Tacoma Art League, which was founded in 1891. It was incorporated as the Tacoma Art Society in the 1930s and took its present name in 1964. Since 1934 the museum has built a permanent collection that includes works by Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, Edward Hopper, Jacob Lawrence, Robert Rauschenberg, Pierre Auguste Renoir, John Singer Sargent, and Andrew Wyeth.

The museum has been exhibiting works by the Pacific Northwest glass artist Dale Chihuly since 1968. Chihuly grew up in Tacoma. Other Pacific Northwest artists represented include painters Rick Bartow, Fay Jones, and Jacob Lawrence, and printmaker Anne Siems, among many others. The museum also showcases traveling exhibitions such as “Picasso: Ceramics from the Marina Picasso Collection” and “Landscape in America 1850-1890.”

In May 2003, the Tacoma Art Museum moved into a new building located at 1701 Pacific Avenue. Designed by Antoine Predock, the 50,000-foot building has a stainless steel and glass exterior. The Museum appointed a new chief curator, Patricia McDonnell, in May 2002. McDonnell was chief curator and adjunct art history professor at the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

Places

Legal status

Functions, occupations and activities

Mandates/sources of authority

Internal structures/genealogy

General context

Relationships area

Access points area

Subject access points

Place access points

Occupations

Control area

Authority record identifier

3.5.8

Institution identifier

Rules and/or conventions used

Status

Level of detail

Dates of creation, revision and deletion

Written by Spencer Bowman, 2022.

Language(s)

Script(s)

Sources

Long, Priscilla, "The L. T. Murrays present Tacoma Art Museum with a downtown building in 1971". HistoryLink.org Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History. Accessed 3/28/2017.

Maintenance notes

  • Clipboard

  • Export

  • EAC

Related subjects

Related places