San Antonio Museum of Art

The San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA) is an art museum in Downtown San Antonio, Texas, USA. The museum spans 5,000 years of global culture. The museum is housed in the historic former Lone Star Brewery (1886) on the Museum Reach of the San Antonio River Walk. Following a $7.2 million renovation, it opened to the public in March 1981. History In 1926, the San Antonio Museum Association founded the Witte Memorial Museum with the intentions of collecting various works of art and natural history objects. By the 1970s, the Witte Memorial Museum acquired notable works of art by artists such as Frank Stella, Wayne Thiebaud, and Philip Guston. Due to the growing pace of art acquisitions, Jack McGregor (former director of the San Antonio Museum Association) recommended the board purchase the former Lone Star Brewery complex and split away from the Witte. Collections The museum's collection of more than 30,000 objects representing 5,000 years of history and culture from every region of the world includes important works from Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities, Asian art, Latin American art, and Contemporary art. A William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905) painting on display entitled Admiration (1897). Art of the Ancient Mediterranean World The museum houses one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of ancient Egyptian, Near Eastern, Greek and Roman art in the southern United States. The Egyptian collection hold objects from the Pre-dynastic through.