Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At, the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 500,000 objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, Flatbush, and Park Slope neighborhoods of Brooklyn, the museum's Beaux-Arts building was designed by McKim, Mead & White.
The Brooklyn Museum was founded in 1823 as the Brooklyn Apprentices' Library and merged with the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences in 1843. The museum was conceived as an institution focused on a broad public. The Brooklyn Museum's current building dates to 1897 and has been expanded several times since then. The museum initially struggled to maintain its building and collection, but it was revitalized in the late 20th century following major renovations.
Significant areas of the collection include antiquities, specifically their collection of Egyptian antiquities spanning over 3,000 years. European, African, Oceanic, and Japanese art make for notable antiquities collections as well. American art is heavily represented, starting at the Colonial period. Artists represented in the collection include Mark Rothko, Edward Hopper, Norman Rockwell, Judy Chicago, Winslow Homer, Edgar Degas, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Max Weber.
History
The Brooklyn Museum's origins date to August 1823, when Brooklyn citizens, including Augustus Graham, founded the Brooklyn Apprentices' Library in Brooklyn Heights. The library was formally incorporated November 24, 1824, and the cornerstone of the library's first building was laid in 1825 on Henry and Cranberry Street. The Library moved into the Brooklyn Lyceum building on Washington Street in 1841. The two institutions merged into the Brooklyn Institute in 1843; the institute offered exhibitions of painting and sculpture and lectures on diverse subjects. The Washington Street building was destroyed in a fire in 1891.Development and opening
In February 1889, several prominent Brooklyn citizens announced that they would begin fundraising for a new museum for the Brooklyn Institute. The museum's proponents quickly identified a site just east of Prospect Park, on the south side of Eastern Parkway. The next year, under director Franklin Hooper, Institute leaders reorganized as the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences and began planning the Brooklyn Museum. Brooklyn officials hosted an architectural design competition for the building, eventually awarding the contract to McKim, Mead & White. The competition was characterized in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle as "one of the most important in the history of architecture", as the museum was to contain numerous divisions. The museum remained a subdivision of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, along with the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and the Brooklyn Children's Museum, until these organizations all became independent in the 1970s.Brooklyn mayor Charles A. Schieren agreed in January 1895 to issue $300,000 per year in bonds for the Brooklyn Institute museum's construction. Initially, only a single wing and pavilion on the western portion of the museum's site, measuring across, was to be built. Engineers began surveying the site that May and found that the bedrock under the site was several hundred feet deep, making it impossible to build the foundations on solid rock. Nonetheless, the engineers had determined that the gravel fill under the site was strong enough to support a building. Construction on the Brooklyn Museum of Arts and Sciences' west wing officially began on September 14, 1895. A groundbreaking ceremony for the museum was hosted on December 14 of the same year. Two of the museum's three stories had been completed by April 1896.
The Brooklyn Institute museum's building was completed in March 1897 after a sidewalk was built between the museum's entrance and Eastern Parkway. The museum's first exhibit was a collection of almost 600 paintings, which had opened to the public on June 1, 1897, several months before the formal opening of the museum. The Brooklyn Institute's museum formally opened on October 2, 1897, and was one of the last major structures built in the city of Brooklyn before the formation of the City of Greater New York in 1898.
20th century
1900s and 1910s
The Brooklyn Institute approved the construction of the central entrance pavilion in May 1899, and Hooper requested $600,000 for this addition the next month. The four-story structure was to measure. The central pavilion was to include a 1,250-seat lecture hall in the basement, as well as a hall of sculpture on the first floor, which would serve as the museum's main lobby. The second story was to contain natural-history exhibits, while the third story was to include paintings. The New York State Legislature needed to authorize $300,000 in bonds for the pavilion, but they had not done so by the end of 1899. Work on the central wing started in June 1900. The museum's central section was nearly completed by January 1903, but work proceeded slowly due to labor disputes.New York City mayor Seth Low signed a bill in August 1902, approving $150,000 for the construction of the Brooklyn Institute's eastern wing and pavilion. The eastern wing cost $344,000 to construct, and it officially opened on December 14, 1907. With the opening of the eastern wing, the museum building had reached one-eighth of its total planned size. Although the museum's collections continued to grow, the New York City government was only willing to give the museum as little funding as necessary for essential maintenance. Several of the institute's donors proposed in 1905 to give $25,000 for the upkeep of an "astronomical observatory" at the Brooklyn Museum. City officials endorsed the creation of the observatory in 1907.
The Brooklyn Institute awarded a construction contract for wings F and G, extending south of the central pavilion, to Benedetto & Egan in May 1911. Extending south and measuring wide, this addition was to contain a central court with a glass roof. That July, McKim, Mead & White filed plans for wings F and G. The Brooklyn Institute converted the last remaining storage rooms in the eastern wing into galleries in October 1911. The next month, a temporary access road was built from Flatbush Avenue to the rear of the building. Wills & Martin, one of the firms that had been hired to erect the new wings, declared bankruptcy in November 1913. Work stopped completely in November 1914, and the incomplete structures started to deteriorate. Because of the lack of space in the building, the lobby and auditorium were being used to exhibit artwork. The Brooklyn Institute had been forced to decline some donations of artwork, as the works could not be displayed, while other works of art had to be placed in storage.
1920s to 1940s
By 1920, the New York City Subway's Institute Park station had opened outside the Brooklyn Museum, greatly improving access to the once-isolated museum from Manhattan and the other boroughs. In April 1922, governor Nathan L. Miller signed legislation authorizing the New York City government to issue bonds to fund wings F and G of the Brooklyn Museum. The New York City Board of Estimate refused to approve the Brooklyn Institute trustees' request for $875,000, and mayor John Francis Hylan also blocked the funding. Hylan changed his mind after visiting the museum, and the Board of Estimate appropriated $1.05 million for the new wings. McKim, Mead & White drew up new plans for wings F and G; by that September, New York City Department of Parks and Recreation was about to award contracts for the wings. A picture gallery opened at the museum in November 1925. The next month, museum officials dedicated the Ethnological Gallery, which was nicknamed "Rainbow House"; the gallery was designed by curator Stewart Culin. A Japanese art gallery opened at the museum in April 1927, and the museum's Swiss Gothic, German, and Venetian galleries opened that May.Construction of the Brooklyn Museum stalled in 1928 after years of attempts to complete it. At the time, only 28 of the 80 proposed statues atop the building's facade had been installed, and the main north–south corridor was not complete. Nineteen American period rooms opened at the museum at the end of 1929. In May 1934, NYC Parks approved plans for the removal of the main entrance steps, which were replaced by ground-level doors. The project also included the construction of two galleries next to the lobby, as well as new landscaping and parking lots. This work was carried out by Public Works Administration laborers. A gallery dedicated to living artists' work opened in February 1935, and a Persian art gallery opened two months later. The remodeled entrance was officially dedicated on October 5, 1935. That December, the museum's medieval art gallery opened. A gallery for industrial art was also proposed behind the western wing but was not built. The museum's remodeling was completed in October 1937. Several collections, including Egyptian and Assyrian art, Renaissance art, and textiles were displayed to the public for the first time.
By early 1938, museum officials sought more than $300,000 for repairs to the museum building, and then-director Philip Newell Youtz said that parts of the building were crumbling. The Brooklyn Museum Art School, formerly a part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, was moved to the Brooklyn Museum in 1941. An art distribution center sponsored by the Works Progress Administration opened on the museum's sixth floor the same year. The department store chain Abraham & Straus donated $50,000 in 1948 for the establishment of a "laboratory of industrial design" at the Brooklyn Museum. By the following year, Brooklyn Institute officials sought to expand the museum as part of a "vast cultural program". The plans involved an annex with a 2,500-seat auditorium behind the west wing, which was planned to cost $500,000, as well as a general renovation of existing facilities, which was to cost $1.5 million. A new 400-seat lecture hall opened at the museum that September, within space formerly occupied by two Egyptian galleries. To attract visitors, the museum expanded its educational programs greatly in the late 1940s.