About Us

Museum History

The Museum of Fine Arts is one of the two Springfield Museums dedicated to fine and decorative arts. The Art Deco-style Museum was erected in response to a bequest from Mr. & Mrs. James Philip Gray, who left their entire estate for the "selection, purchase, preservation, and exhibition of the most valuable, meritorious, artistic, and high class oil paintings obtainable," and for the construction of a Museum to house them. The Museum opened in 1933. The Museum of Fine Arts presents a strong cross section of American and European paintings, sculpture and works on paper.

Museum Exhibits

Upon entering the Museum, visitors immediately see the massive painting by Erastus Salisbury Field titled Historical Monument of the American Republic, on view in Blake Court. The first floor is dedicated to American art ranging from John Singleton Copley's Portrait of Nymphus Marston to Winslow Homer's Promenade on the Beach to contemporary glass sculpture by Dale Chihuly.

In the 20th-century gallery are paintings by George Bellows, Charles Sheeler, Georgia O'Keeffe and Lyonel Feininger. Modern sculptors include Alexander Calder, Richard Stankiewicz and George Sugarman. This floor also includes important examples by American trompe l'oeil and impressionist artists. Motion-controlled lighting in the Starr Gallery allows such light sensitive works on paper as Winslow Homer's The New Novel and Maurice Brazil Prendergast's Merry-Go-Round, Nahant to be displayed periodically. The country’s only permanent Museum gallery dedicated to the lithographs of Currier & Ives will open in November of 2005.

The second floor is a chronological tour of the Museum's fine European art collection. Beginning in the Middle Ages with an intricate 15th-century, Hispano-Flemish Fuentes Retable (altarpiece), the visitor is carried through the Renaissance and subsequent centuries by fine paintings from Italy and France. The Dutch and Flemish collection is particularly strong. Familiar names in the European Impressionism Gallery include Claude Monet, Degas, Pissarro and Gauguin. Changing special exhibitions can be found in the Wheeler Gallery. Changing exhibitions in the Museum’s Community Gallery feature the work of some of the finest artists living and working in the region. Performances, lectures and presentations are offered in the Davis Auditorium.