The Delaware Art Museum is an art museum located on the Kentmere Parkway in Wilmington, Delaware , which holds a collection of more than 12,000 objects. The museum was founded in 1912 as the Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts in honor of the artist Howard Pyle . The collection focuses on American art and illustration from the 19th to the 21st century, and on the English Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood movement of the mid-19th century.
30-611: The museum building was expanded and renovated in 2005 and includes a 9-acre (36,000 m) Sculpture Park, the Helen Farr Sloan Library and Archives, studio art classes, a children's learning area, as well as a cafe and museum store. The museum was founded in 1912 after Howard Pyle's death as the Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts (WSFA), with over 100 paintings, drawings, and prints purchased from Pyle's widow Anne. Pyle
60-470: A copy of The Flower Book by Edward Burne-Jones . In 2009, the museum received the M.G. Sawyer Collection of Decorative Bindings, which contains over 2,000 volumes. The nine acre sculpture garden behind the museum includes nine large sculptures and an old reservoir converted into a labyrinth . Highlights include the 13-foot-tall bronze Crying Giant by Tom Otterness and Three Rectangles Horizontal Jointed Gyratory III by George Rickey , which moves in
90-488: A film titled Helen Farr Sloan: An Artistic Vision as part of an initiative to document the lives and careers of notable artists. The initiative was supported by the Delaware Art Museum as a teaching tool in their galleries. The videos were then distributed to public broadcasting stations, schools, and museums free of charge. The film premiered on February 23, 2000 at the Delaware Art Museum. Helen Farr Sloan died at
120-642: A series of paintings along with Gayle Porter Hoskins illustrating the American forces in the First World War for a series of souvenir prints published in the Ladies Home Journal . Over the course of his career, he made more than 5,000 paintings, many of which were influenced by his travels and the people he met. Schoonover helped to organize what is now the Delaware Art Museum and was chairman of
150-636: The Drexel Institute in Philadelphia. Schoonover became part of what would be known as the Brandywine School when he opted to study art rather than the ministry. A prolific contributor to books and magazines during the early twentieth century, the so-called "Golden Age of Illustration", he illustrated stories as diverse as Clarence Mulford's Hopalong Cassidy stories and Edgar Rice Burroughs 's A Princess of Mars . In 1918 and 1919, he produced
180-633: The New-York Historical Society . Helen Farr Sloan’s own paintings are held in private and public collections, including the Delaware Art Museum and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. Beginning in 1961, and continuing throughout her life, Helen Farr Sloan nurtured a special relationship with the Delaware Art Museum . Because of Helen Farr Sloan’s gifts and scholarship,
210-505: The 1970s, the museum has added works by modern artists such as Jacob Lawrence , Louise Nevelson , Robert Motherwell , George Segal , and Jim Dine . The permanent collections at the museum include the following: Two separate libraries opened in the new Delaware Art Center building in 1938: one centered on the collection of Howard Pyle, and the other centering on Samuel Bancroft, Jr. and his collections of Victorian books and books on Pre-Raphaelite painting. In 1978 Helen Farr Sloan donated
240-694: The Delaware Art Center in June 1938, with the Wilmington Academy of Fine Arts running educational programs on the ground floor. The onset of World War II resulted in strict gas rationing, which drastically reduced the attendance to the museum. The Wilmington Academy of Fine Arts disbanded in 1943 and turned its assets over to the Delaware Art Center, forming the basis of its education department, which grew to more than 500 students by 1954. The rapid growth of educational programs after World War II required
270-468: The Delaware Art Center to expand by 1956. Studios and training facilities were included in the expansion, thanks to a $ 300,000 donation by H. Fletcher Brown. A further renovation was completed in 1970, adding air conditioning and humidity control to the building. In 1972, the Delaware Art Center was awarded accreditation by the American Alliance of Museums . Shortly thereafter, the Delaware Art Center
300-509: The Delaware Art Museum received more than 5,000 works including the preeminent collection of the work of John Sloan with virtually every aspect of his career represented. This has made the Delaware Art Museum the leading repository for the study of John Sloan, who was noted for his realistic images of turn-of-the-century New York City . In the early 1960s, she also taught art part-time at Regis High School in Manhattan. In 1999 Teleduction produced
330-602: The Riverfront . The Delaware Art Museum's collections are predominantly drawn from late 19th- and early 20th-century American illustration, as well as works from the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The basis of the museum's collections are the works of Howard Pyle and his pupils N.C. Wyeth , Frank Schoonover , and Stanley Arthurs. Helen Farr Sloan was the wife of artist John French Sloan , and she began donations in 1961 that eventually totalled 5,000 objects. Since
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#1732851137644360-689: The Sloans, where she was an active member of the Santa Fe art colony. In 1944, while Helen Farr was workings as head of the art department at the Nightingale-Bamford School in New York City, Sloan's first wife, Dolly, died, leaving him a widower at age 74. Later that year, Helen's former teacher, called her and invited her to join him in Santa Fe. Farr arrived in Santa Fe in the summer of 1945. They spent
390-565: The WSFA rented three rooms in the New Library Building on the corner of 10th and Market Streets in downtown Wilmington. In 2005, the DAM took out a $ 24.8 million loan in the form of tax-exempt bonds (to be repaid by 2037) in order to finance an ambitious $ 32.5 million doubling in size of its building. During the 2008 financial crisis , its endowment dropped from $ 33 million to $ 21 million. In response,
420-529: The age of 94 in Wilmington, Delaware . Frank Schoonover Frank Earle Schoonover (August 19, 1877 – September 1, 1972) was an American illustrator who worked in Wilmington, Delaware . A member of the Brandywine School , he was a contributing illustrator to magazines and did more than 5,000 paintings. Schoonover was born on August 19, 1877, in Oxford, New Jersey . He studied under Howard Pyle at
450-629: The arts and a less structured future. She took anatomy classes at Cornell University Medical College and studied weaving , pottery , metalwork , wood carving and jewelry making at the Craft Students League. At sixteen, Helen Farr enrolled in the Art Students League of New York , where she met and studied with John Sloan (1871–1951), who became her lifelong friend and mentor. In the 1930s Helen spent several summers in New Mexico with
480-610: The collection beginning in the 1890s and it is the "largest and most important collection of British Pre-Raphaelite art and manuscript materials in the United States." Despite the hardships of the Great Depression, the WSFA raised $ 350,000 for the new building which opened in 1938. At the same time, the name was changed to Delaware Art Center. The new building was designed by architects Victorine & Samuel Homsey and associate architect G. Morris Whiteside II . The WSFA moved into
510-789: The collection of the Royal Holloway, University of London , and African American Art from the American Folk Art Museum . Exhibitions have also included the works of Mary Page Evans, Howard Pyle , Katharine Pyle , and Katharine Richardson Wireman, as well as The Flower Book by Edward Burne-Jones . The museum offers about 100 programs each year, ranging from 8-week classes to 1-day workshops, as well as open studios. Special classes are offered to adults, teenagers, and children in areas including drawing, painting, photography, jewelry making, and ceramics. Helen Farr Sloan Helen Farr Sloan (24 February 1911 – 13 December 2005)
540-475: The collections of her husband, the John Sloan Manuscript and Library Collection. A consolidated library opened in 1985 in the new Pamela and Lammot du Pont Copeland wing and was named in honor of Mrs. Sloan. It contains over 30,000 volumes and 1,000 boxes of personal papers, photographs and other material related to John Sloan, Samuel Bancroft, Jr. and Howard Pyle and his students. It recently acquired
570-631: The distribution of his estate. The contents of his studio and his wide-ranging library became a treasure trove for philanthropic giving. The recipients of her largesse include the University of Delaware , Sewell C. Biggs Museum in Dover, Delaware , Smithsonian Institution , the National Gallery of Art , Boston Film and Video Foundation, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center , Katonah Museum of Art in New York and
600-502: The fine arts in the State of Delaware." From 1912 to 1922, the WSFA did not have a permanent home. It held annual exhibitions at the Hotel duPont of work by Pyle, as well as juried exhibitions of his pupils and other Delaware artists. The Pyle Collection continued to grow due to the largess of Willard S. Morse , who gave over 100 Pyle pen and ink drawings to the WSFA between 1915 and 1919. In 1922,
630-471: The fundraising committee charged with acquiring works by Howard Pyle . In his later years he restored paintings including some by Pyle and turned to easel paintings of the Brandywine and Delaware landscapes. He also gave art lessons, established a small art school in his studio , designed stained glass windows, and dabbled in science fiction art (illustrating Edgar Rice Burroughs ’ A Princess of Mars ), he
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#1732851137644660-456: The museum sold $ 30 million worth of art from its collection in order to repay its loans and increase its endowment, a move that brought sanctions from the Association of Art Museum Directors . In 1931, the estate of Samuel Bancroft contacted the WSFA with an offer to donate a collection of Pre-Raphaelite works, along with 11 acres of land to house a museum for the collection. Bancroft acquired
690-604: The painting to the right buyer, I felt it was essential to bring this piece back to its rightful home in Tennessee and have the painting here on Veterans Day 11-11-11." Prior to being acquired by Jones, the painting was on loan to the 82nd Airborne Division War Memorial Museum. Schoonover died on September 1, 1972, in Wilmington, Delaware, at 95. The Delaware Art Museum and the Hagley Library maintain an archive of his work and
720-664: The summer collaborating on a book project and just before Farr was set to return to New York Sloan proposed and they were married by a justice of the peace. While her marriage to Sloan lasted only seven years, from 1945 to his death in 1951, Helen Farr Sloan’s devotion to art was a lifelong commitment. After Sloan’s death, she helped to organize his well-received posthumous retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art and returned to her teaching career and to painting. She also spent her remaining years supporting research about her husband and American art history and working overseeing
750-527: The wind. Joe Moss is represented by a sound sculpture which modifies and distorts nearby sounds. The museum presents about ten special exhibitions each year with topics ranging from nationally known modern artists to historical Delaware folk art. Since 2009 the exhibitions have included the works of Leonard Baskin , Delaware photographer Fred Comegys, Harold Eugene Edgerton , James Gurney , May Morris , Maxfield Parrish , Ellen Bernard Thompson Pyle , Frank Schoonover , and John Sloan , as well as works from
780-493: Was a patron of the arts, educator, accomplished artist, and the second wife of artist John Sloan . For over fifty years, Helen Farr Sloan quietly created a remarkable profile as an American philanthropist . Following the 1951 death of her husband, John Sloan, one of the most famous American artists of the twentieth century, Helen organized the artist’s estate and turned it into a philanthropic instrument to serve local, regional, national, and international arts constituencies. She
810-562: Was known locally as the “Dean of Delaware Artists.” Schoonover’s name received national attention in 2011 when his painting of World War I hero Alvin C. York was returned to York’s home state of Tennessee. Businessman and philanthropist Allan Jones of Cleveland, Tennessee , purchased the painting on Veteran’s Day from the Blakeslee Gallery in Wellington, Florida . Jones said, "When I learned that Mr. Blakeslee would consider selling
840-458: Was particularly known for her support for women entering the fields of art history and museum studies. Farr was born in New York City . She was the daughter of Dr. Charles Farr, a New York surgeon, and Helen Woodhull Farr. She graduated high school from the prestigious Brearley School for girls in 1929. Her parents wanted her to attend Bryn Mawr College , but she knew that her interests lay in
870-459: Was renamed the Delaware Art Museum to "reflect the growing strength of its collections, programs, and constituency." A further expansion was completed in 1987 which effectively doubled the size of the museum. However, the rapid growth of attendance, programming, and outreach required a further expansion in 2005. During the expansion, the museum hosted programming at what is now the Chase Center on
900-417: Was the best-known American illustrator of his day; he died unexpectedly in 1911 while on a trip to Italy. Pyle left behind many students and patrons in his home town of Wilmington who wished to honor his memory through the museum, including Frank Schoonover , Stanley Arthurs , and Louisa du Pont Copeland . The museum's charter stated its purpose "to promote the knowledge and enjoyment of and cultivation in
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