Architecture
The Worcester Art Museum started as a small three-story building, designed by Stephen Earle and constructed by Messrs. Norcross Brothers, in 1898. Very little of the exterior this original building can be viewed due to the multiple expansions the museum has undertaken.
In 1927, the Museum purchased a 12th-century French chapter house that was originally part of the Benedictine Priory of St. John at Le Bas-Nueil near Poitiers. Installed in 1932 and linked to the Museum in 1933 via the grand Renaissance Court, the chapter house was the first medieval building ever transported from Europe to America. In 1933 alone, the Museum attracted 200,000 visitors.
Decorating the Renaissance Court floor is unequivocally one of Worcester's greatest ancient treasures – a group of Antioch mosaics dating from the first through the sixth century A.D. that was excavated at Antioch in Syria. The Worcester Art Museum supported the excavation between 1932 and 1939 in partnership with universities and other Museums.
The Museum building has expanded several times, in 1940, 1970 (Higgins Education Wing addition), and 1983 (Frances L. Hiatt Wing for special exhibitions; study and storage area for prints, drawings, and photographs; and an expanded conservation area). The Higgins Education Wing contains studios and classrooms, a professional printmaking studio, a computer studio, photography lab and an exhibition space for student works.
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Famous quotes containing the word architecture:
“Polarized light showed the secret architecture of bodies; and when the second-sight of the mind is opened, now one color or form or gesture, and now another, has a pungency, as if a more interior ray had been emitted, disclosing its deep holdings in the frame of things.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument, that makes a poem,—a thought so passionate and alive, that, like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Defaced ruins of architecture and statuary, like the wrinkles of decrepitude of a once beautiful woman, only make one regret that one did not see them when they were enchanting.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)