Brooks Museum Of Art in Memphis
The Brooks is the largest Museum of Art in the great State of Tennessee and be prepared to spend a few hours being duly impressed with their collection.
At the Brooks, you will see 29 galleries with over 4,500 works of art on paper, a research library with over 5,000 volumes, and there are often special venues held at the auditorium.
The Brooks was founded in 1916, and was built with funds donated by Bessie Vance Brooks in memory of her husband, Samuel Hamilton Brooks. A museum that recognized the diverse backgrounds and contributions of all people to art and history are showcased in the massive collection at the Brooks.
The Brooks Museum's permanent collection of paintings highlights Italian Renaissance and Baroque as well as other Western European Impressionists, and other 20th-century artists.
Cubism is well represented and there are pieces from many of the artists who were directly influenced by Picasso's style of taking a simple object apart and examining it in different ways. Hence the chopped up art style of "cubism".
Additionally, you can see The Kress Collection which is a grand gathering of some of the best of his Renaissance paintings. The Brooks has one of the finest collections of English portraiture in the South, with works by Gainsborough, Reynolds, Lawrence, and Romney among others.
Impressionists include Pissarro and Renoir. Winslow Homer, Thomas Hart Benton, Childe Hassam, and Robert Henri are just a few of the Americans represented at the Brooks. Many well-known figures in contemporary art are in the Fogelman Loan Collection, including Kenneth Noland, Robert Motherwell, and Nancy Graves.
If you want to have an artfully good time on your next visit to Memphis, be sure to schedule a stop by the Brooks Museum of Art!
