Displaying items by tag: walters art museum

Amazing discovery. A multi-million dollar restoration project at the Washington Monument in Baltimore reveals a rare find. Marcus Washington was one of the first to see what’s been hidden for a century.

For the past ten months, it’s been work as usual on the restoration of the Washington Monument, gearing up for the bicentennial celebration. That was–until last week.

The Walters Art Museum announced Monday that it's been awarded $913,000 in grants to support renovations and exhibitions at the museum, including a special show on Islamic art scheduled to open next year.

That sum is made up of six individual donations — four from government agencies and two from private foundations — Walters spokeswoman Mona Rock said in a news release.

The bulk of the money, $500,000 will be used to support "Pearls on a String: Art and Relationship in the Islamic World," which is scheduled to open in the fall of 2015.

The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore says it has digitized and catalogued more than 600 American paintings and other artworks, making them available for download and public use.

The new digital archive includes rarely seen works from John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt and John La Farge, among other artists. The museum said it used a $111,615 grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services to pay for the project.

The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, announced that it will renovate its Hackerman House, one of five buildings on the institution’s campus. The 19th-century mansion, which houses the Walters’ Asian art collection, will close on July 1 so that its fire safety and mechanical systems can be updated. In addition, the building’s galleries will be refurbished and the exterior will be repaired. The project is expected to take approximately 18 months to complete.

Art normally displayed in the Hackerman House’s galleries will mostly be moved to storage during the renovations while a select few pieces will go on view in other areas of the museum. In addition to some private fundraising, the $5.2 million project is being financed by the city and state.

Founded by William Thompson Walters and his son, Henry Walters, the Walters Art Museum is renowned for its Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Ethiopian, and Western medieval art collections as well as its holdings of Renaissance and Asian art. The Walters also has an impressive collection of illuminated manuscripts and rare books.