Bowdoin College Museum of Art
McKim, Mead, and White
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Alternative Title
Walker Art Building
Date
1894Description
The front elevation, keystone; The original collection of European paintings, Old Master drawings, and family portraits given by James Bowdoin III and his family in 1811 and 1826 was housed in a sequence of different campus locations until The Walker Art Building was completed in 1894. Included on the National Register of Historic Places, the handsome structure was given to the College by Harriet and Sophia Walker in honor of their uncle Theophilus Walker, a Boston entrepreneur and businessman. The Walker sisters were encyclopedic collectors and supporters of art education; they selected the renowned architect Charles Follen McKim whose firm McKim, Mead and White also designed the Boston Public Library, Morgan Library in New York, and the Brooklyn Museum, among many other important commissions. A landmark building in the history of museum architecture in the United States, the Bowdoin College Museum of Art is one of the few remaining structures in which the architectural and decorative ideals of the late nineteenth century are so fully realized. Source: Bowdoin College [website]; http://www.bowdoin.edu (accessed 2/11/2008)
Type of Work
art museumSubject
architectural exteriors, Art museums, Education, Renaissance Revival
Rights
Rights Statement
Licensed for educational and research use by the MIT community only