Memphis Brooks Museum of Art is an art museum in Memphis, Tennessee

Memphis, Tennessee

Memphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee, and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the 4th Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers....

. The Brooks Museum, which was founded in 1916, is the oldest and largest art museum in the state of Tennessee

Tennessee

Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...

. The museum is a privately funded nonprofit institution located in Overton Park

Overton Park

Overton Park is a large, public park in Midtown Memphis, Tennessee. The park grounds contain the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis Zoo, a 9-hole golf course, Memphis College of Art, Rainbow Lake, Veterans Plaza, Greensward, and other features...

 in Midtown Memphis.

The original Beaux-Arts  building, a registered U.S. National Landmark

National Historic Landmark

A National Historic Landmark is a building, site, structure, object, or district, that is officially recognized by the United States government for its historical significance...

 designed by James Gamble Rogers

James Gamble Rogers

James Gamble Rogers was an American architect best known for his academic commissions at Yale University, Columbia University, Northwestern University, and elsewhere....

 in 1913, was donated by Bessie Vance Brooks in memory of her husband, Samuel Hamilton Brooks. The cylindrical extension, opened in 1955, was designed by Memphis architect Everett Woods. The Brooks’ facilities also include the Brooks Museum Store, the Brushmark Restaurant, the Holly Court garden, and a grand terrace that overlooks the greens and trees of Overton Park. In 1989, the building was expanded and reoriented by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill

Skidmore, Owings and Merrill

Skidmore, Owings and Merrill LLP is an American architectural and engineering firm that was formed in Chicago in 1936 by Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel Owings; in 1939 they were joined by John O. Merrill. They opened their first branch in New York City, New York in 1937. SOM is one of the largest...

. The expansion, which doubled the square footage of the existing building, included a new public entrance as well as a three-story gallery space where the old and new buildings join.

The facility consists of 29 galleries, art classrooms, a print study room with over 4,500 works of art on paper, a research library with over 5,000 volumes, and an auditorium. The collection has over seven thousand works of art, including paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, and examples of the decorative arts. Of particular note are the Samuel H. Kress Collection of Renaissance and Baroque paintings, the Hugo N. Dixon Collection of Impressionist paintings, the Levy Collection of American prints, the Goodman Book Collection, and the Goodheart Collection of Carl Gutherz paintings, drawings, and archival material.

Permanent collection

Paintings in the permanent collection include works by Italian Renaissance

Italian Renaissance painting

Italian Renaissance painting is the painting of the period beginning in the late 13th century and flourishing from the early 15th to late 16th centuries, occurring within the area of present-day Italy, which was at that time divided into many political areas...

, Baroque, Impressionist

Impressionism

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...

, and 20th-century artists

20th century art

20th-century art and what it became known as — modern art — really began with modernism in the late 19th century. Nineteenth-century movements of Post Impressionism and Art Nouveau led to the first twentieth-century art movements of Fauvism in France and Die Brücke in Germany. Fauvism in Paris...

. The Kress Collection is one of numerous collections of paintings distributed by this philanthropist among American museums. The Brooks also has a fine collection of English portraits, including works by Gainsborough

Thomas Gainsborough

Thomas Gainsborough was an English portrait and landscape painter.-Suffolk:Thomas Gainsborough was born in Sudbury, Suffolk. He was the youngest son of John Gainsborough, a weaver and maker of woolen goods. At the age of thirteen he impressed his father with his penciling skills so that he let...

, Reynolds

Joshua Reynolds

Sir Joshua Reynolds RA FRS FRSA was an influential 18th-century English painter, specialising in portraits and promoting the "Grand Style" in painting which depended on idealization of the imperfect. He was one of the founders and first President of the Royal Academy...

, Lawrence

Thomas Lawrence

Thomas Lawrence may refer to:*Sir Thomas Lawrence, British artist, President of Royal Academy*Thomas Lawrence , mayor of colonial Philadelphia*T. E. Lawrence, "Lawrence of Arabia"*Thomas Lawrence , U.S. politician...

, and Romney

George Romney (painter)

George Romney was an English portrait painter. He was the most fashionable artist of his day, painting many leading society figures - including his artistic muse, Emma Hamilton, mistress of Lord Nelson....

. There are impressionist works by Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro was a French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas . His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, as he was the only artist to exhibit in both forms...

, Renoir

Renoir

-People with the surname Renoir :* Pierre-Auguste Renoir , French painter* Pierre Renoir , French actor and son of Pierre-Auguste Renoir* Jean Renoir , French film director and son of Pierre-Auguste Renoir...

, and many American impressionists: 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....

, Thomas Hart Benton

Thomas Hart Benton (painter)

Thomas Hart Benton was an American painter and muralist. Along with Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry, he was at the forefront of the Regionalist art movement. His fluid, almost sculpted paintings showed everyday scenes of life in the United States...

, Childe Hassam

Childe Hassam

Frederick Childe Hassam was a prolific American Impressionist painter, noted for his urban and coastal scenes. Along with Mary Cassatt and John Henry Twachtman, Hassam was instrumental in promulgating Impressionism to American collectors, dealers, and museums...

, and Robert Henri

Robert Henri

Robert Henri was an American painter and teacher. He was a leading figure of the Ashcan School in art.- Early life :...

. The contemporary collection includes paintings by Kenneth Noland

Kenneth Noland

Kenneth Noland was an American abstract painter. He was one of the best-known American Color field painters, although in the 1950s he was thought of as an abstract expressionist and in the early 1960s he was thought of as a minimalist painter. Noland helped establish the Washington Color School...

, Robert Motherwell

Robert Motherwell

Robert Motherwell American painter, printmaker and editor. He was one of the youngest of the New York School , which also included Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Philip Guston....

, and Nancy Graves, plus the nationally-known Memphis artist Carroll Cloar

Carroll Cloar

Carroll Cloar was a nationally known 20th century painter born in Earle, Arkansas, who focused his work on surreal views of Southern U.S...

.

The Brooks Museum also conserves a selection of 19th and 20th century sculpture and decorative arts, including furniture and textiles.