The Fogg Museum, opened to the public in 1896, is the oldest of Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

's art museums. The Fogg joins the Busch-Reisinger Museum

Busch-Reisinger Museum

The Busch-Reisinger Museum, opened to the public in 1903, is one of two museums in North America dedicated to the study of art from the German-speaking countries of Europe. The other museum is the Neue Galerie, located in New York City. The Busch-Reisinger joins the Fogg Museum and the Arthur M...

 and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum

Arthur M. Sackler Museum

The Arthur M. Sackler Museum joins the Fogg Museum and the Busch-Reisinger Museum as part of the Harvard Art Museums. Its postmodern building was designed by British architect James Stirling, generally regarded as the greatest British architect of the 20th century, and recipient of the Pritzker...

 as part of the Harvard Art Museums.

The museum was originally housed in an Italian Renaissance

Italian Renaissance

The Italian Renaissance began the opening phase of the Renaissance, a period of great cultural change and achievement in Europe that spanned the period from the end of the 13th century to about 1600, marking the transition between Medieval and Early Modern Europe...

-style building designed by Richard Morris Hunt

Richard Morris Hunt

Richard Morris Hunt was an American architect of the nineteenth century and a preeminent figure in the history of American architecture...

. In 1925, the building was replaced by a Georgian Revival-style structure across Quincy Street, designed by Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch, and Abbott

Shepley Bulfinch

Shepley Bulfinch is an international architecture, planning, and interior design firm with offices in Boston and Phoenix...

. (The original Hunt Hall remained in Harvard Yard, underutilized until it was demolished in 1974 to make way for new freshman dormitories.) In 2008, the building closed for a major renovation project to create a new museum building designed by architect Renzo Piano

Renzo Piano

Renzo Piano is an Italian architect. He is the recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, AIA Gold Medal, Kyoto Prize and the Sonning Prize...

 that will house all three Harvard art museums in one facility. During the renovation, selected works from all three museums are on display at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum

Arthur M. Sackler Museum

The Arthur M. Sackler Museum joins the Fogg Museum and the Busch-Reisinger Museum as part of the Harvard Art Museums. Its postmodern building was designed by British architect James Stirling, generally regarded as the greatest British architect of the 20th century, and recipient of the Pritzker...

.

Collection

The Fogg Museum is renowned for its holdings of Western paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, photographs, prints, and drawings from the Middle Ages

Middle Ages

The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...

 to the present. Particular strengths include Italian Renaissance

Italian Renaissance

The Italian Renaissance began the opening phase of the Renaissance, a period of great cultural change and achievement in Europe that spanned the period from the end of the 13th century to about 1600, marking the transition between Medieval and Early Modern Europe...

, British Pre-Raphaelite, and French art of the 19th century

French art of the 19th century

19th-century French art was made in France or by French citizens during the following political regimes: Napoleon Bonaparte's Consulate and Empire , the Restoration under Louis XVIII and Charles X , the July Monarchy under Louis Philippe d'Orléans , the Second Republic , the Second Empire under...

, as well as 19th- and 20th-century American paintings and drawings.

The museum's Maurice Wertheim

Maurice Wertheim

Maurice Wertheim was an American investment banker, chess player, chess patron, environmentalist, and philanthropist. He financed much of the activity in American chess during the 1940s. Wertheim founded Wertheim & Co. in 1927.-Biography:Maurice Wertheim graduated from Harvard University in 1906...

 Collection is a notable group of impressionist and postimpressionist works that contains many famous masterworks, including paintings and sculpture by Paul Cézanne

Paul Cézanne

Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th...

, Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas[p] , born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist...

, Édouard Manet

Édouard Manet

Édouard Manet was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism....

, Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...

, Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

, and Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh

Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...

. Central to the Fogg's holdings is the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection, with more than 4,000 works of art. Bequeathed to Harvard in 1943, the collection continues to play a pivotal role in shaping the legacy of the Harvard Art Museums, serving as a foundation for teaching, research, and professional training programs. It includes important 19th-century paintings, sculpture, and drawings by William Blake

William Blake

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...

, Edward Burne-Jones

Edward Burne-Jones

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet was a British artist and designer closely associated with the later phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who worked closely with William Morris on a wide range of decorative arts as a founding partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Company...

, Jacques-Louis David

Jacques-Louis David

Jacques-Louis David was an influential French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the preeminent painter of the era...

, Honoré Daumier

Honoré Daumier

Honoré Daumier was a French printmaker, caricaturist, painter, and sculptor, whose many works offer commentary on social and political life in France in the 19th century....

, Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer was an American landscape painter and printmaker, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th century America and a preeminent figure in American art....

, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres was a French Neoclassical painter. Although he considered himself to be a painter of history in the tradition of Nicolas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David, by the end of his life it was Ingres's portraits, both painted and drawn, that were recognized as his greatest...

, Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to...

, Auguste Rodin

Auguste Rodin

François-Auguste-René Rodin , known as Auguste Rodin , was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past...

, John Singer Sargent

John Singer Sargent

John Singer Sargent was an American artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian era luxury. During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings...

, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa or simply Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, and illustrator, whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of fin de siècle Paris yielded an œuvre of exciting, elegant and provocative images of the modern...

, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler.

Many of the works in the Fogg Museum can be accessed as part of the Harvard Art Museums' online Collection Search, which 250,000 works of art.

External links

• Harvard Art Museums website
• Fogg Museum website
• Busch-Reisinger Museum website
• Arthur M. Sackler Museum website
• Archaeological Exploration of Sardis, Turkey website
• Center for the Technical Study of Modern Art website
• Harvard Art Museums Archives website
• The Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies website
• Harvard Art Museums Collection Search website
• Harvard University website