Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum is the art museum of Washington University in St. Louis, located on the university's Danforth Campus within the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Founded in 1881 as the St. Louis School and Museum of Fine Arts, it is the oldest art museum west of the Mississippi River. The museum holds a collection spanning 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century European and American art, with additional holdings in Egyptian and Greek antiquities and Old Master prints. Since 2006 it has occupied a building designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Fumihiko Maki, and it serves as both a public institution and an integral part of the university's art and architecture programs.

The museum was established in 1881 as part of Washington University in St. Louis under the name St. Louis School and Museum of Fine Arts, with Halsey C. Ives as its first director. During his tenure, the collection focused on contemporary American artists, notably William Merritt Chase. In 1905, St. Louis banker Charles Parsons donated his private collection, including works by Frederic Edwin Church, which established the museum as a significant holder of contemporary American art. The museum moved to the Palace of Fine Arts in Forest Park in 1906, remaining there until 1909. That year, the City Museum of Art was formed with its own civic tax funding, and large portions of the university collection remained on loan to the public museum until 1960.

By the end of 1931, the university's collection was extensive but dispersed, with works by Chase, Frederic Remington, Anders Zorn, and Rosa Bonheur either loaned to the city museum, displayed on campus, or stored. Its estimated value of $1,000,000 ranked with collections at Harvard, Princeton, and Yale.

In 1941, H.W. Janson joined the university and guided a renewal of the collection with a new focus on contemporary European art, particularly Cubism, Expressionism, and Surrealism. Janson sold 120 artworks, retained 80, and acquired 40 works by European modernists including Paul Klee, Juan Gris, and Theo van Doesburg through the Kende Galleries. He also arranged for a permanent home for the collection. After his departure in 1948, the museum moved in 1960 to Steinberg Hall on the main campus and was renamed the Washington University Gallery of Art.

The museum was renamed the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum in 2004 as a division of the new Sam Fox School of Visual Art and Design. In 2006, it moved to a new 65,000-square-foot building adjacent to Steinberg Hall, designed by Fumihiko Maki. In May 2018, the museum closed for renovation as part of a $360 million campus transformation program. It reopened in September 2019 with a 34-foot-tall polished stainless-steel facade, a relocated sculpture garden, nearly 50 percent more public display space, and a new 2,700-square-foot exhibition space named the James A. Kemper Gallery.

The museum's collection encompasses 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century European and American paintings, sculptures, prints, installations, and photographs. Under H.W. Janson's direction in the 1940s, the collection shifted toward contemporary European modernism with acquisitions in Cubism, Expressionism, and Surrealism. More recently, the museum has focused on acquiring contemporary works by artists such as Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jenny Holzer. The collection also includes Egyptian and Greek antiquities, Old Master prints, and the Wulfing collection of approximately 14,000 coins from Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, and the Byzantine period.

The permanent collection includes works acquired through the Charles Parsons donation of 1905, notably pieces by Frederic Edwin Church. Under H.W. Janson, the museum acquired works by Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Juan Gris, Paul Klee, and Theo van Doesburg. The museum also holds works by William Merritt Chase from its early collecting focus, and by Frederic Remington and Anders Zorn from its pre-Janson holdings. Contemporary acquisitions include works by Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jenny Holzer. The collection of George Caleb Bingham's Daniel Boone Escorting Settlers through the Cumberland Gap is also noted among its holdings.

The museum's current building, which opened in 2006, was designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Fumihiko Maki as part of a five-building complex. The 65,000-square-foot structure houses not only the museum but also the Washington University Art and Architecture library and the department of Art History and Archaeology. The 2018-2019 renovation added a new facade composed of 30-foot-tall pleated stainless steel panels, a redesigned entrance, the James A. Kemper Gallery, and the relocated Florence Steinberg-Weil Sculpture Garden north of the Sam Fox School's new Anabeth and John Weil Hall. The Sam Fox School complex, established in 2005, represents a nearly $60 million investment in new and renovated art, architecture, and museum facilities, with two buildings by Maki including the Kemper Art Museum building.

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum is located on the Danforth Campus of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, within the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. The museum is part of a five-building complex that includes the College of Art and the College of Architecture. It maintains four exhibition spaces: the Barney A. Ebsworth Gallery, Garen Gallery, Bernoudy Permanent Collection Gallery, and teaching gallery. The museum reopened to the public in September 2019 following its expansion, with inaugural exhibitions including a major show of work by Ai Weiwei titled Bare Life. As an institution, it functions both as a public museum and as an academic resource integrated with the university's studio and scholarly programs in art and architecture.