Dayton Art Institute
The Dayton Art Institute is a museum of fine arts in Dayton, Ohio, United States. The Dayton Art Institute has been rated one of the top 10 best art museums in the United States for children. The museum also ranks in the top 3% of all art museums in North America in 3 of 4 factors. In 2007, the art institute saw 303,834 visitors.
History
Founded in a downtown mansion in 1919 as the Dayton Museum of Fine Arts, the museum moved to a newly designed Edward B. Green building in 1930. The DAI was modeled after the Casino in the gardens of the Villa Farnese at Caprarola, and the front hillside stairway was inspired by the Italian Renaissance garden stairs at the Villa d'Este, near Rome, and Italy. The building was originally constructed with imported roof tiles from Italy, but after they began to crumble from the harsher Ohio winters they were replaced by Ludowici tiles in 1979. It is also visible from and easily accessible from I-75, which passes through the center of Dayton.The museum was later renamed the Dayton Art Institute as an indication of the growing importance of its school in addition to the museum. The nearly building is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Museum information
The museum's collection contains more than 20,000 objects spanning 5,000 years. In September, 2005, the Museum became one of eleven galleries in the US to host The Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt, the largest collection of ancient artifacts ever to travel outside Egypt.The art museum is an Italian Renaissance–style building, which sits atop a hill overlooking downtown Dayton. The institute's highlights are the museum's Asian, 17th-century Baroque, 18th- and 19th-century American, and contemporary art collections. In addition to its collections, the museum frequently features other exhibitions.