On February 1, 1922, the Akron Art Institute, later the Akron Art Museum, opened in two borrowed rooms in the basement of the public library. The museum's archived history page documents both the exact date and its early ambitions: art instruction, exhibitions, and eventually a permanent home and collection. The Wikipedia article repeats the opening date and links the institute to founders Edwin Coupland Shaw and Jennifer Bond Shaw, whose arts-appreciation classes shaped its early program. This modest opening is historically useful because it shows how many regional American museums began as education-centered art institutes before becoming collecting museums, in Akron's case with a later focus on art from 1850 onward.
A borrowed-room art institute evolved into a major regional museum for modern and contemporary art.