Q3666871

The Chazen Museum of Art is the principal art museum of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, located in Madison, Wisconsin. Founded in 1970 as the Elvehjem Art Center, it has grown to become the second-largest art museum in Wisconsin, with 176,000 square feet of gross floor area and a collection exceeding 25,000 objects as of 2026. The museum serves as both a public cultural institution and an integral part of the university's teaching mission, housing works spanning from antiquity to the contemporary period.

The museum originated as the Elvehjem Art Center in 1970, named for Conrad Elvehjem, the thirteenth president of the University of Wisconsin, Madison and an internationally recognized biochemist in nutrition. The institution was later known as the Elvehjem Museum of Art before its renaming. In May 2005, the museum became the Chazen Museum of Art following a $20 million building-expansion gift from alumni Jerome A. Chazen and Simona Chazen. Jerome Chazen was a founder of Liz Claiborne Inc. (now Kate Spade & Company). The Chazens provided further support in 2011, including $5 million for the museum building, $3 million to endow chairs in art and art history, and 30 works of art valued at $20 million. A second major gift in 2015 from the Chazen family totaled $28 million, including $20 million in artworks from their private collection. Russell Panczenko directed the museum from 1984 to 2017, succeeded by Amy Gilman. In 2018, the museum joined a pilot program by the Association of Art Museum Directors to provide paid internships to minority undergraduate students.

The Chazen Museum of Art maintains a collection of more than 25,000 objects encompassing painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, photography, decorative arts, and furniture. The holdings span an exceptionally broad chronological and cultural range, from ancient Greece through Western Europe, the Soviet Union, the Mughal Empire, East Asia, Islamic art, and traditional African art. The museum is the official repository for Tandem Press, a Madison-based fine arts publisher, archiving one print from every edition published. The Van Vleck collection of Japanese woodblock prints forms a significant portion of the works on paper. The collection also includes Russian Social Realist paintings, regionalist works, and contemporary pieces.

European artists represented include Joan Miró, Auguste Rodin, Salvador Dalí, Barnaba da Modena, Barbara Hepworth, Jean Dufy, Andrea Vanni, Giorgio Vasari, René Magritte, Maurice Utrillo, Hubert Robert, Thomas Gainsborough, Albert Gleizes, Henry Moore, Benjamin Williams Leader, Eugène Boudin, and Maximilien Luce. The American collection features Mark Rothko, Andy Warhol, Grandma Moses, Alexander Calder in multiple media, and a copy of the Emancipation Memorial. Additional holdings include works by Adolph Gottlieb, Jack Tworkov, John Steuart Curry, and Richard Bosman; glass art by René Lalique; Japanese ceramics and woodblock prints; and drawings by the Russian sculptor Antoine Pevsner. The museum also maintains collections of antique furniture, medals, and coins.

The original museum building opened in 1970 as a brutalist structure designed by Illinois architect Harry Weese, situated at the heart of the University of Wisconsin, Madison campus. This building, which retains the Conrad A. Elvehjem name, was designed to house the university's then-collection of 1,600 artworks. The 2005 Chazen gift funded an additional building, designed by the Boston-based firm Machado-Silvetti (Machado & Silvetti Associates), which opened in 2011. The new structure connects to the original building by a bridge and doubled the museum's size.

The Chazen Museum of Art operates on the campus of the University of Wisconsin, Madison in Madison, Wisconsin. The museum is open to the public with hours of 10:00 to 19:00 on weekdays, and 11:00 to 17:00 on weekends. The museum's website is https://chazen.wisc.edu/. For three decades, chamber concerts known as Sunday Afternoon Live from the Chazen (formerly Live at the Elvehjem) were broadcast by Wisconsin Public Radio; though WPR discontinued the broadcast in 2015, the concert series continues monthly as a live show with webcast.