Palmer Museum Of Art

History

The Palmer Museum's bold façade, the outward result of a major expansion and renovation in 1993, surrounds the museum's original 1972 building, a three-story structure that once housed only three galleries to display traveling exhibitions and art from the museum's permanent collection.

The Museum of Art, as it was known, opened to the public on Sunday, October 7, 1972. More than 1,500 students, faculty, and members of Penn State's administration were given tours of the new building and the museum's first exhibitions. Along with a Penn State faculty show and the exhibition Masterworks by Pennsylvania Painters in Pennsylvania Collections , curated by the late Harold Dickson, were selections from the newly formed permanent collection. One of the original pieces in the museum's collection was a mobile by Alexander Calder titled Spring Blossoms that is still on view in the galleries today. The mobile had been a gift to Penn State from the Class of 1965. To assist in expanding the permanent collection, the mobile and a portion of the moneys from the graduating class gift each year were given to the museum through the 1970s.

Affirmative Action
Affirmative Action, 1987, acrylic on canvas, 100 x 88 1/4 inches, by Jerry Kearns (American, b. 1943). Gift of Joseph D. and Janet M. Shein. Collection of the Palmer Museum of Art.

Slowly, the museum built a permanent collection with funding from graduating classes, the University, private donors, and the Friends of the Palmer Museum of Art, a membership group founded in 1974 to help with the museum's fund-raising and outreach efforts. The Friends alone, have donated more than fifty works of art to the collection, including a fifteenth-century woodcut by Albrecht Dürer, a marble portrait bust of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow by American sculptor Henry Dexter, and an oil-on-panel portrait by Gilbert Stuart, to name just a few.

More than half of the 5,500 works of art in the permanent collection have been donated or purchased with funds contributed to the museum. Significant donors include Dr. and Mrs. Harold L. Tonkin, who bequeathed a large portion of their collection of Asian ceramics and decorative arts along with numerous European paintings with Asian themes; Dr. William E. Harkins, who has donated more than 150 Japanese prints to the museum since the mid-1970s; Mary Jane Harris and her late husband, Morton, who have given several Italian Baroque paintings with a number more promised; Joseph and Janet Shein, who have donated more than two dozen contemporary paintings and sculptures since 2000; and, of course, Barbara Palmer and her late husband, James, who have not only made great contributions to the museum's collection of American art but also gave $2 million in 1986 to initiate the campaign to expand the museum.

Completed in 1993, the expansion added ten new galleries to better showcase the museum's outstanding and still growing permanent collection and special exhibitions, including impressive titles from Rembrandt to Rodin . Many of the galleries and renovated spaces were named for donors to the expansion who have become some of the museum's greatest supporters. These include Katherine W. Christoffers, Donald Hamer, the Palmer and Lipcon families, Richard and Sally Kalin, the Tonkins, David and Gerry Pincus, and Alvin and Jean Snowiss.

Now, more than ten years later, the museum has undergone another transformation. Just in time for the museum's thirtieth anniversary in fall 2002, renovations to the original 1972 building were completed, adding a new space for the study of works on paper and a fully reconstructed, 3,100-square-foot gallery--the largest of the museum's exhibition areas. James and Barbara Palmer, again, made the lead gift for these most recent renovations, which were also supported by many of our oldest and dearest friends, including John and Ruth Robinson, Philip and Judith Sieg, Katherine W. Christoffers, Marie Bednar and Donald W. Hamer, Gerald B. M. Stein, B. J. and Carol Cutler, and Blake and Linda Gall. Collectively, the major donors to the renovation decided to name the new gallery for William Hull, the museum's founding director.

The William Hull gallery may seem familiar to those who remember the museum's earlier days. The original slate floors and unique grid ceiling are in tact--with a new coat of polish and paint, of course. By reclaiming such a large and significant gallery on the second floor of the original building, the museum has gained more exhibition space for its collection. The addition of a new print study room on the same floor also enables the museum to share its expansive collection of works on paper with interested students, faculty, visiting scholars, and the general public.