History
The roots of the Brooklyn Museum extend back to the 1823 founding by Augustus Graham of the Brooklyn Apprentices’ Library in Brooklyn Heights. The Library moved into the Brooklyn Lyceum building on Washington Street in 1841; the institutions merged two years later to form the Brooklyn Institute, which offered exhibitions of painting and sculpture and lectures on diverse subjects. In 1890, under its director Franklin Hooper, Institute leaders reorganized as the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences and began planning the Brooklyn Museum. Until the 1970s the Museum would remain a subdivision of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, among other subdivisions that at one point included the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and the Brooklyn Children's Museum (all became independent at that time).
Opened in 1897, the Brooklyn Museum building is a steel frame structure—built to the standards of classical masonry—designed by the famous architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White and built by the Carlin Construction Company. The initial design for the Brooklyn Museum was four times as large as the actualized version; actualized plans reflect a compromise to the specifications of the New York City government. Daniel Chester French, the noted sculptor of the Lincoln Memorial, was the principal designer of the pediment sculptures and the monolithic 12½ foot figures along the cornice. The figures were carved by 11 different sculptors. French was also the designer of the two allegorical figures Brooklyn and Manhattan currently flanking the museum's entrance (created in 1916 for the Brooklyn approach to the Manhattan Bridge, relocated to the museum in 1963).
The Brooklyn Institute's director Franklin Hooper was the museum's first director, succeeded by William Henry Fox who served from 1914-1934. He was followed by Philip Newell Youtz from 1934–1938, Laurance Page Roberts from 1939–1946, Isabel Spaulding Roberts from 1943–1946, Charles Nagel, Jr. from 1946–1955, and Edgar Craig Schenck from 1955-1959.
Thomas S. Buechner was named as the museum's director in 1960, making him one of the youngest directors in the country. Buechner oversaw a major transformation in the way the museum displayed art and brought some one thousand works that had been languishing in the museum's archives and put them on display. Buechner played a pivotal role in rescuing the Daniel Chester French sculptures from destruction due to an expansion project at the Manhattan Bridge in the 1960s.
From 1971–1974 Duncan F. Cameron served as director, with Michael Botwinick serving from 1974–1982, Linda S. Ferber as acting director for part of 1983, and Robert T. Buck from 1983-1997.
The Brooklyn Museum changed its name to Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1997, shortly before the start of Arnold L. Lehman's current term as director. On March 12, 2004, the museum announced that it would revert to its previous name. In April 2004, a new entrance pavilion, designed by James Stewart Polshek and facing Eastern Parkway, opened at the Brooklyn Museum.
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