USC Fisher Museum of Art

The USC Fisher Museum of Art, formerly known as USC Fisher Gallery, is an art museum affiliated with the University of Southern California. Located in Los Angeles, it holds the distinction of being the first art museum established in the city. The institution serves as a space for inclusion and connection, reflecting the diversity of the university and the broader Los Angeles community through its artwork and programming.

Elizabeth Holmes Fisher founded the museum on November 14, 1939, initially donating 29 paintings to the institution. Over the following years, she continued to expand the holdings. By the time of her death in 1955, the original donation had grown to encompass 74 paintings, drawings, and sculptures by European and North American artists. That same year, Armand Hammer made a significant contribution to the museum by donating a collection of 48 works by Dutch, Flemish, German, and Italian masters dating from the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries.

The museum houses a permanent collection of approximately 1,800 objects. Its historical strengths include nineteenth century American landscapes, sixteenth and seventeenth century Northern European paintings, eighteenth century British portraiture, and nineteenth century French Barbizon paintings. In recent decades, the institution has rapidly expanded its holdings of twentieth and twenty first century art, increasing not only in size but in scope. These modern and contemporary collections span painting, prints, drawings, photography, and sculpture, and the museum features exhibitions of local, international, and emerging artists.

Highlights of the permanent collection include several significant European paintings, such as Venus Wounded by a Thorn from circa 1608 to 1610 by Peter Paul Rubens, and St. John the Evangelist from 1618 to 1620, which is attributed to Anthony van Dyck. Eighteenth century British portraiture is represented by Angelica Kauffmann's Isabella Hunter formerly Mrs. Anne Downman from circa 1776 to 1790, George Romney's Emma, Lady Hamilton, and Thomas Gainsborough's Mrs. Burroughs from 1769. Later European works include Jean-Francois Millet's Femme Etandant Son Linge. Modern and contemporary highlights feature Andy Warhol's Richard Nixon from 1972 and Jenny Holzer's Blacklist from 1999.

The museum building was constructed in 1939. It was designed by the architectural firm of Paul Robinson Hunter, with Hunter serving as the architect. The structure is situated in Exposition Park, a historic and growing museum destination, placing it alongside other major cultural institutions in the area.

The museum is located at 823 Exposition Boulevard, Los Angeles, California, 90089, on the University of Southern California University Park Campus. Admission to the museum is always free. It operates Tuesday through Friday from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM, with occasional Saturday openings. Group visits are accommodated, though the museum requests that visitors submit a group visit request form at least three weeks prior to their desired date. The institution is currently directed by Selma Holo.