Cincinnati Art Museum

The Cincinnati Art Museum is one of the oldest art museums in the United States. Founded in 1881, it was the first purpose-built art museum west of the Alleghenies. Its collection of over 60,000 works make it one of the most comprehensive collections in the Midwest.

Museum founders debated locating the museum in either Burnett Woods, Eden Park, or downtown Cincinnati on Washington Square. Charles West, the major donor of the early museum, cast his votes in favor of Eden Park sealing its final location. The Romanesque-revival building designed by Cincinnati architect James W. McLaughlin opened in 1886. A series of additions and renovations have considerably altered the building over its 120 year history.

In 2003, a major addition, The Cincinnati Wing was added to house a permanent exhibit of art created for Cincinnati or by Cincinnati artists since 1788. The Cincinnati Wing includes fifteen new galleries covering 18,000 square feet (1,700 m2) of well-appointed space, and 400 objects. The Odoardo Fantacchiotti angels are two of the largest pieces in the collection. Fantacchiotti created these angels for the main altar of St. Peter in Chains Cathedral in the late 1840s. They were among the first European sculptures to come to Cincinnati.. The Cincinnati Wing also contains the work of Frank Duveneck, Rookwood Pottery, Robert Scott Duncanson Mitchell and Rammelsberg (Cincinnati's premier 19th-century furniture manufacturer) and a tall case clock by Luman Watson.