Museums
Speed Art Museum
Established 1927

Speed Art Museum, located in Louisville}, is the largest and oldest art museum in [1904. Established in 1927, the museum currently has a collection that comprises more than 12,000 art pieces. The collection is dominated by Western art, ranging from the medieval period to modern times. On average, the museum receives more than 180,000 visitors each year.

Speed Art Museum was established by Hattie Bishop Speed in 1925, in memory of her husband, James Breckinridge Speed, who was an eminent businessman and philanthropist. Hattie Speed served as the first president and director of the museum. It was originally named J.B. Speed Memorial Museum, and later as J.B. Speed Art Museum. The museum building was designed by Louisville-based architect Arthur Loomis. The first exhibition, sponsored by the Louisville Art Association, was held on January 15, 1927. It featured more than 100 paintings by reputed American and European painters.

The museum was incorporated as a privately endowed institution in 1933. It received its first major donation the following year, a vast collection of North American Indian artifacts presented by Dr. Frederick Weygold. Other significant donations were made by Dr. Preston Pope Satterwhite. In 1941, he donated his collection of 15th- and 16th-century French and Italian decorative arts. In 1944, he graced the museum with an English renaissance room, which was transported in one piece from Devonshire, England. The room required the museum's expansion, which was the first of the major additions made to the original building. In 1996, the museum received a bequest of more than $50 million from Alice Speed Stoll, granddaughter of James Breckinridge Speed. It was one of the largest bequests given to any art museum. The monetary gift was utilized in acquiring such masterpieces as Jacob van Ruisdael’s "Landscape with Cottages and a Blasted Tree" (1653), and Paul Cezanne’s "Two Apples on a Table" (sometime between 1895 and 1900). Those acquisitions promoted the Speed Art Museum to the top 25 art museums in the United States.

The Speed Art Museum celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1977 by acquiring Rembrandt's masterpiece, “Portrait of a Woman.” The $1.5 million painting is one of the museum’s most noteworthy acquisitions. Currently, the museum boasts more than 150,000 square feet of gallery, exhibition, and administrative space. The collections include 17th-century Dutch and Flemish painting, 18th-century French art, Renaissance and Baroque tapestries, and contemporary American paintings and sculptures. There also is a sizeable number of African and Native-American works. The museum also has a special section devoted to Kentuckian artists.

Sponsors of U-S-History.com:

Sponsor this site