The Fresno Art Museum is an art museum in Fresno, California. The museum’s collection includes contemporary art, modern art, Mexican and Mexican-American art, and Pre-Columbian sculpture. The Fresno Art Museum offers a dynamic experience for appreciating art. The museum welcomes, inspires, and educates a diverse regional audience through significant exhibitions, thought-provoking programs, and meaningful interactions with artists and the creative process.
History
In the late 1940s, a group of local artists formed the Fresno Art League to provide a facility to exhibit and critique each other’s work and to share their enthusiasm for art. The League gathered support for their organization from the community, and in 1949, the Fresno Arts Center was incorporated. Finally 1960, after years of planning, the Fresno Arts Center building in Radio Park at First Street and Clinton Avenue was dedicated. Junk Removal Fresno
The Fresno Arts Center became an active venue for art exhibitions and educational programs, including artist talks, workshops, and art classes for children and adults. A mission statement, goals, and objectives were developed. In 1973 the Arts Center was granted accreditation by the American Association of Museums (now, American Alliance of Museums) after an extensive study of the organization, finances, staff expertise, programs, care and storage of the permanent collection, and physical facilities.
Permanent Collection
Earth, Fire & Stone: Kenneth E. Stratton Collection of Mesoamerican Art
September 1992 marked the opening of the Fresno Art Museum’s Hans Sumpf Gallery of Mexican Art. It was an opening highlighted by an installation entitled Masterpieces of Mesoamerican Pre-Columbian Ceramics from the Kenneth E. Stratton Collection. The gallery was designed to give the impression of walking into a space similar in feeling to a shaft tomb, as most of the ceramic artworks from Kenneth Stratton’s bequest originally came from just such Mesoamerican burial sites. Prompted by Stratton’s gift to the Museum, the Sumpf family contributed the necessary funds to house the collection. Because Hans Sumpf and Kenneth Stratton had been lifelong friends, it is fitting that this gallery honors the life of two remarkable men who cared passionately about their community and the vital culture of our southern neighbors.
Andean Mesoamerican Textiles and Artifacts
In the spring of 1995, the Fresno Art Museum introduced its audience to the Mesoamerican Andean collection assembled by the weaver Janet B. Hughes. Representing regional variations drawn from several cultures, the Hughes Collection of Andean Mesoamerican Art indicates that weaving was one of the earliest forms of artistic expression and a means of status identification for the ancient peoples of Peru. Numbering over 650 artifacts, the Hughes Collection features textiles and ceramic artifacts from the southernmost point of Peru. Carved wooden objects, including ceremonial vessels known as keros, are included in the current exhibition, along with a selection of ancient textiles recovered from tombs throughout Peru. In addition, a group of ceramic vessels from various cultures once living in this arid region reveal examples of the stylized zoomorphic and anthropomorphic forms that are repeated in some of the vivid-colored textiles. Even though the Andean potters employed simple techniques in producing ceremonial and utilitarian vessels, they crafted vessels with graceful lines and pleasing proportions. The sculpted vessels may take on these same anthropomorphic or zoomorphic shapes and often include painted designs applied to the surface. Nazca, Moche, Lambayeque, Chancay, Chiribaya, and Arica cultures are represented in the ceramic works.
Address: 2233 N First St, Fresno, CA
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