The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 500,000 objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, Flatbush, and Park Slope neighborhoods of Brooklyn, the museum's Beaux-Arts building was designed by McKim, Mead & White.
The Brooklyn Museum was founded in 1823 as the Brooklyn Apprentices' Library and merged with the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences in 1843. The museum was conceived as an institution focused on a broad public. The Brooklyn Museum's current building dates to 1897 and has been expanded several times since then. The museum initially struggled to maintain its building and collection, but it was revitalized in the late 20th century following major renovations.
Significant areas of the collection include antiquities, specifically their collection of Egyptian antiquities spanning over 3,000 years. European, African art, Oceanic art, and Japanese art make for notable antiquities collections as well. American art is heavily represented, starting at the Colonial period. Artists represented in the collection include Mark Rothko, Edward Hopper, Norman Rockwell, Judy Chicago, Winslow Homer, Edgar Degas, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Max Weber.
Brooklyn mayor Charles A. Schieren agreed in January 1895 to issue $300,000 per year in bonds for the Brooklyn Institute museum's construction. Initially, only a single wing and pavilion on the western portion of the museum's site, measuring across, was to be built. Engineers began surveying the site that May and found that the bedrock under the site was several hundred feet deep, making it impossible to build the foundations on solid rock. Nonetheless, the engineers had determined that the gravel fill under the site was strong enough to support a building. Construction on the Brooklyn Museum of Arts and Sciences' west wing officially began on September 14, 1895. A groundbreaking ceremony for the museum was hosted on December 14 of the same year. Two of the museum's three stories had been completed by April 1896.
The Brooklyn Institute museum's building was completed in March 1897 after a sidewalk was built between the museum's entrance and Eastern Parkway. The museum's first exhibit was a collection of almost 600 paintings, which had opened to the public on June 1, 1897, several months before the formal opening of the museum. The Brooklyn Institute's museum formally opened on October 2, 1897, and was one of the last major structures built in the city of Brooklyn before the formation of the City of Greater New York in 1898.
New York City mayor Seth Low signed a bill in August 1902, approving $150,000 for the construction of the Brooklyn Institute's eastern wing and pavilion. The eastern wing cost $344,000 to construct, and it officially opened on December 14, 1907. With the opening of the eastern wing, the museum building had reached one-eighth of its total planned size. Although the museum's collections continued to grow, the New York City government was only willing to give the museum as little funding as necessary for essential maintenance. Several of the institute's donors proposed in 1905 to give $25,000 for the upkeep of an "astronomical observatory" at the Brooklyn Museum. City officials endorsed the creation of the observatory in 1907.
The Brooklyn Institute awarded a construction contract for wings F and G, extending south of the central pavilion, to Benedetto & Egan in May 1911. Extending south and measuring wide, this addition was to contain a central court with a glass roof. That July, McKim, Mead & White filed plans for wings F and G. The Brooklyn Institute converted the last remaining storage rooms in the eastern wing into galleries in October 1911. The next month, a temporary access road was built from Flatbush Avenue to the rear of the building. Wills & Martin, one of the firms that had been hired to erect the new wings, declared bankruptcy in November 1913. Work stopped completely in November 1914, and the incomplete structures started to deteriorate. Because of the lack of space in the building, the lobby and auditorium were being used to exhibit artwork. The Brooklyn Institute had been forced to decline some donations of artwork, as the works could not be displayed, while other works of art had to be placed in storage.
Construction of the Brooklyn Museum stalled in 1928 after years of attempts to complete it. At the time, only 28 of the 80 proposed statues atop the building's facade had been installed, and the main north–south corridor was not complete. Nineteen American opened at the museum at the end of 1929. In May 1934, NYC Parks approved plans for the removal of the main entrance steps, which were replaced by ground-level doors. The project also included the construction of two galleries next to the lobby, as well as new landscaping and parking lots. This work was carried out by Public Works Administration laborers. A gallery dedicated to living artists' work opened in February 1935, and a Persian art gallery opened two months later. The remodeled entrance was officially dedicated on October 5, 1935. That December, the museum's medieval art gallery opened. A gallery for industrial art was also proposed behind the western wing but was not built. The museum's remodeling was completed in October 1937. Several collections, including Egyptian and Assyrian art, Renaissance art, and textiles were displayed to the public for the first time.
By early 1938, museum officials sought more than $300,000 for repairs to the museum building, and then-director Philip Newell Youtz said that parts of the building were crumbling. The Brooklyn Museum Art School, formerly a part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, was moved to the Brooklyn Museum in 1941. An art distribution center sponsored by the Works Progress Administration opened on the museum's sixth floor the same year. The department store chain Abraham & Straus donated $50,000 in 1948 for the establishment of a "laboratory of industrial design" at the Brooklyn Museum. By the following year, Brooklyn Institute officials sought to expand the museum as part of a "vast cultural program". The plans involved an annex with a 2,500-seat auditorium behind the west wing, which was planned to cost $500,000, as well as a general renovation of existing facilities, which was to cost $1.5 million. A new 400-seat lecture hall opened at the museum that September, within space formerly occupied by two Egyptian galleries. To attract visitors, the museum expanded its educational programs greatly in the late 1940s.
Another Egyptian gallery opened in April 1959, and a "pattern library" for teaching opened that July. A continued shortage of security guards forced the Brooklyn Museum to close two days a week at the beginning of 1961; the museum went back to seven-day operations in June 1961 after the city provided money for additional guards. To attract visitors, the museum began providing a larger variety of programs and adding interactive exhibits and programming. The Brooklyn Museum announced in 1964 that it would build a special-exhibit gallery on the first floor and an open study/storage gallery on the fifth floor. The Hall of the Americas opened on the museum's first floor the following May. A sculpture garden, consisting of architectural details salvaged from demolished buildings across New York City, opened at the museum in April 1966. The Brooklyn Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art began coordinating joint programs and exhibitions in 1967.
By the late 1960s, the museum was again facing a funding shortage; several galleries had been temporarily closed due to a lack of money, and its director Thomas Buechner was considering closing the museum two days a week. Brooklyn Museum officials also wanted to hire additional security guards to deter crime. The Brooklyn Museum's Community Gallery, exhibiting black New Yorkers' art, opened in October 1968 following advocacy from Federated Institutes of Cultural Enrichment (FICE), a coalition of Brooklyn-based arts organizations. The gallery occupied a narrow corridor at ground level. Henri Ghent, the director of the Community Gallery, estimated in 1970 that "perhaps 100,000" additional patrons had been attracted to the museum after the gallery opened, including black patrons who had never before visited a museum.
By the mid-1970s, there were plans to split the Brooklyn Children's Museum and the Brooklyn Museum Art School from the Brooklyn Museum. At the time, the museum received $1.5 million per year from the city. Four galleries for Korean and Japanese art opened at the museum in October 1974, and the African art galleries reopened in December 1976 following an expansion and renovation. The Brooklyn Museum also began renovating 21 American in 1976. Following a 1978 investigation into some of the museum's acquisitions, state attorney general Louis J. Lefkowitz recommended that the museum implement "a comprehensive code of ethics". The same year, the Brooklyn Museum partnered with Designgroup and the Egyptian government to restore the Cairo Museum's collection. Due to budget cuts, the Brooklyn Museum eliminated its Middle Eastern art division in 1979, despite the fact that the museum had frequently applied for federal grants in the preceding years, most of which had been approved from 1976 to 1978.
Two of the museum's period rooms reopened in 1980 following a renovation. By then, director Michael Botwinick was considering several measures to reduce the museum's budgetary shortfalls, including halving the number of art classes, closing the museum during the workweek, and hosting fewer exhibits per year. At the time, the museum received 31 percent of its funds from the city, a higher percentage than other New York City museums; the city still owned the building itself. After Robert Buck became director in 1983, he began hosting additional art classes, attracting members, and raising money for the museum, which struggled to compete with more famous institutions in Manhattan. In 1984, the museum completed the renovations of its last period rooms and opened a gallery for "early-19th-century decorative arts". The unprofitable Brooklyn Museum Art School was closed the same year, and the museum obtained $14 million in city funding to upgrade the climate-control systems. The museum resumed Monday operations in late 1984 after receiving additional city funding, and it started running TV advertisements in 1985.
Museum officials held an architectural design competition to redesign the west wing, attracting 103 competitors; they hired Arata Isozaki of James Stewart Polshek Partners that October. Isozaki's design retained much of McKim, Mead & White's original plan but included a "great hall" and trapezoidal courtyards, as well as an angled rear wall and an obelisk. Buck expressed optimism that media coverage of the design competition would attract additional visitors, even if the master plan was never completely carried out. The scope of the renovation grew quickly, with estimated costs reaching $200 million by early 1988. Iris and B. Gerald Cantor donated $3.5 million for the museum's auditorium in 1989, and the city gave another $2 million for other work. The Brooklyn Museum announced in 1990 that it would begin the first phase of renovation, which was to cost $31 million. This involved converting the offices in the west wing to about of gallery space for its Egyptian collection, as well as building storage space and an auditorium. The same year, budget cuts prompted museum officials to lay off employees and close its doors on Mondays.
The auditorium opened in 1991; at the time, there had not been an auditorium at the museum for over half a century. About in the museum's west wing reopened as gallery space in November 1993. The renovation retained the original layout of the west-wing spaces. The New York Times described Isozaki and Polshek's renovation as aiming for "clean, serene spaces"; the rooms had rooms with maple floors, white walls, horizontal lighting strips, and granite . The west wing was renamed for investor Morris Schapiro and his brother, art historian Meyer Schapiro, in early 1994 after Morris Schapiro donated $5 million.
The Brooklyn Museum changed its name to Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1997. According to acting director Linda S. Ferber, the renaming was necessary because "there was more confusion about the museum's identity than we supposed"; for instance, many visitors still believed the museum had natural-history exhibits, which had not been the case since 1934.
The museum extensively renovated its Great Hall, which reopened in early 2011, and it relocated and reopened its African art gallery on the first floor the same year. A museum shop opened at the Brooklyn Museum in early 2012, followed later that year by a new cafe. The upscale restaurant Saul opened within the Brooklyn Museum in October 2013, changing its name to The Norm in 2016. By the mid-2010s, the museum was facing financial difficulties, and half of the 465,000 annual patrons did not pay admission because of the museum's suggested admission policy. The Brooklyn Museum's Chinese-art gallery reopened in 2019.
In 2021, Brooklyn Museum staff organized to form a union representing various roles, including curators, educators, and front-desk workers. The union vote passed with strong support, and union members ratified their first contract in November 2023, following two years of negotiations. Due to increasing financial deficits, in museum officials laid off employees and reduced the number of annual exhibitions in early 2025, though further job reductions were averted due to increased funding from the city.
The pavilions at either end of the Eastern Parkway facade protrude only slightly from the facade and contain engaged columns in the Ionic order. The west and east wings are divided vertically by ; between each set of pilasters are windows with . The entablature above the pilasters contains a frieze with inscribed names of figures who represent knowledge.
The Eastern Parkway facade is topped by 20 monolithic figures on the cornice: one above each pilaster on the west and east wings, and four above the pavilions. An additional ten figures, five each on the western and eastern elevations of the outermost pavilions, were sculpted. The sculptures were carved by the Piccirilli Brothers, who sculpted a total of 30 figures on the museum's facade.
Fourteen sculptors were hired to design the sculptures, which each measure high. Had the full building been completed, there would have been 80 sculptures in total, with 20 each depicting classical subjects, medieval and Renaissance subjects, modern European and American subjects, and Asian subjects. The 30 extant sculptures consist of the 20 classical sculptures (10 Greek and 10 Roman) on the northern elevation, as well as five Persian and five Chinese sculptures on the side elevations.
The main lobby, originally occupied by the ground-level auditorium, was built during the mid-20th century as a modern-style space. Although then-director Philip Newell Youtz was the architect of record, the lobby's design may have been influenced by William Lescaze, who was Youtz's friend. The lobby, containing black-glass panels and indirect lighting, was described in the 1939 WPA Guide as "an example of the best in modern architecture... devoid of the elaborate decoration which so often clutters up the entrances of public building." Following a 2011 renovation, the lobby was redesigned as a double-height central gallery surrounded by columns.
Duncan F. Cameron assumed the directorship in 1971, following Buechner's resignation; Cameron himself resigned in 1973. Michael Kan was appointed as acting director in early 1974, serving for a few months. He was succeeded by Michael Botwinick, who was appointed in 1974 and stepped down in 1982. Robert T. Buck became director in 1983 and served until he resigned in 1996, upon which Linda S. Ferber became acting director. From 1992 to 1995, Stephanie Stebich was Buck's assistant director. Arnold L. Lehman was named as the museum's director in April 1997, and Lehman announced in September 2014 that he would retire the next year. In May 2015, Creative Time president and artistic director Anne Pasternak was named the museum's next director; she assumed the position on September 1, 2015.
Since 2014, the director's position has formally been known as the Shelby White and Leon Levy Director of the Brooklyn Museum, after Leon Levy Foundation cofounder Shelby White donated $5 million to the directorship's endowment.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Brooklyn Museum had an endowment of $108 million, but the museum applied for federal funding through the Paycheck Protection Program after its endowment declined by one-fifth in 2020. Amid the pandemic and its negative impact on museum revenue, the museum raised funds for an endowment to pay for collections care by selling or deaccessioning works of art. The October 2020 sale consisted of 12 works by artists including Lucas Cranach the Elder, Gustave Courbet, and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, while other sales throughout that month included Modernist artists. Though usually prohibited by the Association of Art Museum Directors, the association allowed such sales to proceed for a two-year window through 2022 in response to the effects of the pandemic.
In 1967 the Federated Institutes of Cultural Enrichment (FICE), a coalition of Brooklyn-based arts organizations, demanded that the Brooklyn Museum exhibit more works by artists from the borough, especially African American artists. The museum then hired black curator Henri Ghent to direct a new "Community Gallery", supported at first by the New York State Council on the Arts; he worked at the museum till 1972. Ghent's first exhibition, Contemporary Afro-American Arts (1968), included artists Joe Overstreet, Kay Brown, Frank Smith, and Otto Neals.
In 1999–2000, the Sensation exhibition of Charles Saatchi's collection provoked controversy for its inclusion of works such as Chris Ofili's The Holy Virgin Mary. The exhibition prompted then-mayor Rudolph Giuliani to threaten to withhold city funding from the museum. In the resulting lawsuit,Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences v. City of New York, 64 F.Supp.2d 184 (E.D.N.Y. November 1, 1999) a U.S. district court judge ruled that the New York City government could not withhold city funds from the Brooklyn Museum on First Amendment grounds.
In 2002, the museum received the work The Dinner Party, by feminist artist Judy Chicago, as a gift from The Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. Its permanent exhibition began in 2007, as a centerpiece for the museum's Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. In 2004, the Brooklyn Museum featured Manifest Destiny, an oil-on-wood mural by Alexis Rockman that was commissioned by the museum as a centerpiece for the second-floor Mezzanine Gallery and marked the opening of the museum's renovated Grand Lobby and plaza. Other exhibitions have showcased the works of various contemporary artists including Patrick Kelly, Chuck Close, Denis Peterson, Ron Mueck, Takashi Murakami, Mat Benote, Kiki Smith, Jim Dine, Robert Rauschenberg, Ching Ho Cheng, Sylvia Sleigh William Wegman, Jimmy de Sana, Oscar yi Hou, Baseera Khan, Loraine O'Grady, John Edmonds, Cecilia Vicuña, Sonia Guiñansaca, and a 2004 survey show of work by Brooklyn artists, Open House: Working in Brooklyn
In 2008, curator Edna Russman announced that she believes 10 out of 30 works of Coptic art held in the museum's collection—second-largest in North America are fake. The artworks were exhibited starting in 2009.
In early to mid-2018, the museum hosted what was the final stop of the touring exhibit David Bowie Is, which had begun in 2013 in London and visited nearly a dozen countries before reaching the Brooklyn Museum. Costumes from The Crown and The Queen's Gambit television series were put on display as part of its virtual exhibition "The Queen and the Crown" in November 2020. From June through September 2023, coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of Pablo Picasso's death, the museum hosted It's Pablo-matic: Picasso According to Hannah Gadsby, curated by Hannah Gadsby; though the exhibition was popular, it was also highly controversial. To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Brooklyn Apprentices' Library's incorporation, the museum launched a series of special exhibits and events in 2024.;
The Egyptian, Classical, and Ancient Near Eastern collections are housed in a series of galleries in the museum. Egyptian artifacts can be found in the long-term exhibit, Egypt Reborn: Art for Eternity, as well as in the Martha A. and Robert S. Rubin Galleries. Near Eastern artifacts are located in the Hagop Kevorkian Gallery.
Represented in the American art collection are works by artists such as William Edmondson ( Angel, date unknown), John Singer Sargent's Paul César Helleu sketching his wife Alice Guérin (ca. 1889); Georgia O'Keeffe's Dark Tree Trunks (ca. 1946), and Winslow Homer's Eight Bells (ca. 1887). Among the most famous works in the collection are Gilbert Stuart's portrait of George Washington and Edward Hicks's Edward Hicks. The museum also holds a collection by Emil Fuchs.
Works from the American art collection can be found in various areas of the museum, including in the Steinberg Family Sculpture Garden and in the exhibit, American Identities: A New Look, which is contained within the museum's Visible Storage ▪ Study Center. In total, there are approximately 2,000 American Art objects held in storage.
The Brooklyn Museum's African art collection includes more than 6,000 objects. The African art collection covers 2,500 years of human history and includes sculpture, jewelry, masks, and religious artifacts from more than 100 African cultures. Noteworthy items in this collection include a carved ndop figure of a Kuba king, believed to be among the oldest extant ndop carvings, and a Lulua mother-and-child figure.
In 2018, the museum drew criticism from groups including Decolonize This Place for its hiring of a white woman as Consulting Curator of African Arts.
====Selections from the African collection====
Art objects in this collection are crafted from a wide variety of materials. The museum lists "coconut fiber, feathers, shells, clay, bone, human hair, wood, moss, and spider webs" as among the materials used to make artworks that include masks, , sculpture, and jewelry.
The Brooklyn Museum has had a photography collection since the 19th century. The museum initially did not seek out photographs for its collection, which was initially composed exclusively of photographers' and collectors' gifts. Since 1993, the collection has been part of the Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs.
The museum's Steinberg Family Sculpture Garden has salvaged architectural elements from throughout New York City. The sculpture garden dates from 1966 and includes objects such as the Bayard–Condict Building's capitals and the sculptures at the Manhattan Bridge's Brooklyn entrance.
As part of the Museum Apprentice Program, the museum hires teenage high schoolers to give tours in the museum's galleries during the summer, assist with the museum's weekend family programs throughout the year, participate in talks with museum , serve as a teen advisory board to the museum, and help plan teen events. The museum also runs the Museum Education Fellowship Program, a ten-month position where fellows lead school group visits with a focus on various topics from the collection. School Youth and Family Fellows teach Gallery Studio Programs and School Partnerships while Adult and Public Programs Fellows curate and organize Thursday night as well as First Saturday Programming.
The museum has posted many pieces to a digital collection that allows the public to folksonomy and curate sets of objects online, as well as solicit additional scholarship contributions. The museum's ASK App allows visitors to talk with staff and educators about works in the collection.
The New York Times attributed the drop in attendance partially to the policies instituted by then-current director Arnold Lehman, who has chosen to focus the museum's energy on "populism", with exhibits on topics such as "Star Wars movies and hip-hop music" rather than on more classical art topics. Lehman had also brought more controversial exhibits, such as a 1999 show that included Chris Ofili's infamous dung-decorated The Holy Virgin Mary, to the museum. According to the Times:
The quality of their exhibitions has lessened", said Robert Storr, the dean of the Yale University School of Art and a Brooklynite. " Star Wars shows the worst kind of populism. I don't think they really understand where they are. The middle of the art world is now in Brooklyn; it's an increasingly sophisticated audience and always was one.
On the other hand, Lehman says that the demographics of museum attendees are showing a new level of diversity. According to The New York Times, "the average age of was 35, a large portion of the visitors (40 percent) came from Brooklyn, and more than 40 percent identified themselves as people of color." Lehman states that the museum's interest is in being welcoming and attractive to all potential museum attendees, rather than simply amassing large numbers of them.
, the Brooklyn Museum has a pay what you want policy for general-admission tickets. Half of patrons did not pay any admission in 2017.
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