The Chrysler Museum of Art is an art museum in the Ghent district

Ghent District

The Arrondissement of Ghent is the largest of the six administrative arrondissements in the Province of East Flanders, Belgium. It is both an administrative and a judicial arrondissement...

 of Norfolk, Virginia

Norfolk, Virginia

Norfolk is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. With a population of 242,803 as of the 2010 Census, it is Virginia's second-largest city behind neighboring Virginia Beach....

. The museum was originally founded in 1933 as the Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences. In 1971, automotive heir, Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. (whose wife, Jean Outland Chrysler, was a native of Norfolk), donated most of his extensive collection to the museum. This single gift significantly expanded the museum's collection, making it one of the major art museums in the Southeastern United States

Southern United States

The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...

. From 1958 to 1971, the Chrysler Museum of Art was a smaller museum consisting solely of Chrysler's personal collection and housed in the historic Center Methodist Church

Center Methodist Church

The Center Methodist Church or Center Methodist Episcopal Church is located in Provincetown, Massachusetts at 356 Commercial Street. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The church moved to a new building in 1955.-History:...

 in Provincetown, Massachusetts

Provincetown, Massachusetts

Provincetown is a New England town located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 3,431 at the 2000 census, with an estimated 2007 population of 3,174...

. Today's museum sits on a small body of water known as The Hague in the Ghent district

Ghent District

The Arrondissement of Ghent is the largest of the six administrative arrondissements in the Province of East Flanders, Belgium. It is both an administrative and a judicial arrondissement...

, near downtown Norfolk

Downtown Norfolk, Virginia

As the traditional center of shipping and port activities in the Hampton Roads region, Norfolk, Virginia's downtown waterfront historically played host to numerous and often noxious port and shipping-related uses...

.

The Collection

The New York Times described the Chrysler collection as "one any museum in the world would kill for." Comprising over 30,000 objects the collection spans over 5000 years of world history. American and European paintings and sculpture from the Middle Ages to the present day form the core of the collection.

The museum's most significant holdings include works by Tintoretto

Tintoretto

Tintoretto , real name Jacopo Comin, was a Venetian painter and a notable exponent of the Renaissance school. For his phenomenal energy in painting he was termed Il Furioso...

, Veronese

Paolo Veronese

Paolo Veronese was an Italian painter of the Renaissance in Venice, famous for paintings such as The Wedding at Cana and The Feast in the House of Levi...

, Peter Paul Rubens, Diego Velázquez

Diego Velázquez

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was a Spanish painter who was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV. He was an individualistic artist of the contemporary Baroque period, important as a portrait artist...

, Salvator Rosa

Salvator Rosa

Salvator Rosa was an Italian Baroque painter, poet and printmaker, active in Naples, Rome and Florence. As a painter, he is best known as an "unorthodox and extravagant" and a "perpetual rebel" proto-Romantic.-Early life:...

, Gianlorenzo Bernini, John Singleton Copley

John Singleton Copley

John Singleton Copley was an American painter, born presumably in Boston, Massachusetts, and a son of Richard and Mary Singleton Copley, both Irish. He is famous for his portrait paintings of important figures in colonial New England, depicting in particular middle-class subjects...

, Thomas Cole

Thomas Cole

Thomas Cole was an English-born American artist. He is regarded as the founder of the Hudson River School, an American art movement that flourished in the mid-19th century...

, Eugène Delacroix

Eugène Delacroix

Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school...

, Édouard Manet

Édouard Manet

Édouard Manet was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism....

, Paul Cézanne

Paul Cézanne

Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th...

, Gustave Doré

Gustave Doré

Paul Gustave Doré was a French artist, engraver, illustrator and sculptor. Doré worked primarily with wood engraving and steel engraving.-Biography:...

, Albert Bierstadt

Albert Bierstadt

Albert Bierstadt was a German-American painter best known for his lavish, sweeping landscapes of the American West. In obtaining the subject matter for these works, Bierstadt joined several journeys of the Westward Expansion...

, Auguste Rodin

Auguste Rodin

François-Auguste-René Rodin , known as Auguste Rodin , was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past...

, Mary Cassatt

Mary Cassatt

Mary Stevenson Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker. She lived much of her adult life in France, where she first befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists...

, Paul Gauguin

Paul Gauguin

Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...

, Georges Rouault

Georges Rouault

Georges Henri Rouault[p] was a French Fauvist and Expressionist painter, and printmaker in lithography and etching.-Childhood and education:Rouault was born in Paris into a poor family...

, Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...

, Georges Braque

Georges Braque

Georges Braque[p] was a major 20th century French painter and sculptor who, along with Pablo Picasso, developed the art style known as Cubism.-Early Life:...

, Edward Hopper

Edward Hopper

Edward Hopper was a prominent American realist painter and printmaker. While most popularly known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching...

, Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock

Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...

, Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol

Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...

, Richard Diebenkorn

Richard Diebenkorn

Richard Diebenkorn was a well-known 20th century American painter. His early work is associated with Abstract expressionism and the Bay Area Figurative Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. His later work were instrumental to his achievement of worldwide acclaim.-Biography:Richard Clifford Diebenkorn Jr...

, Karen LaMonte

Karen LaMonte

Karen LaMonte is an American artist known for her life-size sculptures in ceramic, bronze and cast glass as well as her large scale monotype prints.-Background:...

 and Franz Kline

Franz Kline

Franz Jozef Kline was an American painter mainly associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement centered around New York in the 1940s and 1950s. He was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and attended Girard College, an academy in Philadelphia for fatherless boys...

.

The Chrysler Museum is home to the final sculpture of the Baroque

Baroque

The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...

 master Gianlorenzo Bernini, a marble bust of Jesus

Jesus

Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...

 created as a gift for the artist's benefactor, Queen Christina of Sweden.The Museum also houses one of the world's greatest collections of glass (including outstanding works by Louis Comfort Tiffany), distinguished holdings in the decorative arts, and a fine and growing collection of photography. The arts of the ancient world, Asia, Africa, and Pre-Columbian America are also well represented.

Programs and Exhibitions

The Chrysler Museum strives each day to fulfill its purpose, to remain a catalyst, bringing art and people together to enrich and transform lives. A full range of guided tours, lectures, films, concerts, family days, travel programs, and publications are designed to engage the community in works of art displayed in the museum. Each year, over 100 Volunteer Docents welcome over 60,000 students from Hampton Roads' schools for tours at the Museum the Historic Houses.

The Chrysler not only offers visitors the opportunity to engage in artwork from its permanent collection, but the Museum also introduces several changing exhibitions including unique works from around the globe. Recent offerings include Rembrandt's Etchings: The Embrace and Darkness of Light", "From Goya to Sorolla: Masterpieces from The Hispanic Society of America", "To Conserve a Legacy: American Art from Historically Black Colleges and Universities", "Rodin: Sculpture from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Collection" and finally the latest installment, "American Chronicles: The Art of Norman Rockwell.

The Jean Outland Chrysler Library

The Jean Outland Chrysler Library is one of the largest and most important art libraries in the South. The collection covers the entire history of world art, with special emphasis on material relevant to the Chrysler's permanent collection. The Library subscribes to several hundred art-related journals, has an extensive collection of current and historical auction catalogues, and exchanges publications with 400 art museums around the world.

The Library is named in honor of Jean Outland Chrysler, wife of the late Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., who played a leading roled in its formation and expansion. The collection is based on the original holdings of the Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences library. In 1977, the library of the London art dealer M. Knoedler & Co. was purchased, adding major historical reference volumes, periodicals, and rare annotated sales catalogues. The Library also houses the Museum's archives, a rich source of local history that includes Mark Twain's original typescript of a speech he delivered at the Jamestown Tricentennial Exposition of 1907 and a collection of papers from the Moses Myers family provides unique insights into the life of an important Tidewater merchant during the nation's early history.

Historic Houses

In addition to its main building in downtown Norfolk, the Chrysler Museum of Art also administers two important Historic Houses.

Moses Myers House

The Moses Myers House in downtown Norfolk is not only an unusually elegant example of Federal period architecture, but almost unique in America as it retains 70% of its original contents. The House and its furnishings allow visitors to experience first-hand the life of a prosperous Jewish merchant and his family during the early 19th century. Moses Myers moved to Norfolk in 1787 with his wife Eliza. Five years later, he purchased a large lot where he erected a home for his family. Today the house contains an important collection of American, English, and French furniture, along with glass, silver, and ceramics, and portraits by Gilbert Stuart, Thomas Sully, and John Wesley Jarvis. All were commissioned or acquired by members of the Myers family.

Norfolk History Museum at the Willoughby-Baylor House

The Norfolk History Museum at the Willoughby-Baylor House: The Norfolk History Museum at the newly-refurbished Willoughby-Baylor House (ca. 1794) illuminates the wide range and richness of the history of the entire region by providing engaging thematic offerings and surveys including the decorative arts of Norfolk, the story of Norfolk at various stages in its history as an international port and maritime center, and the area's impressive naval and military heritage.

General Museum Information

Museum Hours

Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
Noon-5pm	Closed	Closed	10am-9pm	10am-5pm	10am-5pm	10am-5pm

Moses Myers House Hours

Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
Noon-4pm	Closed	Closed	Closed	Closed	Noon-4pm	Noon-4pm

The Norfolk History Museum at the Willoughby-Baylor House

Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
Noon-4pm	Closed	Closed	Closed	Closed	Noon-4pm	Noon-4pm

Admission Charge

FREE (Voluntary contributions are accepted)

External links

• Official Website
• Cosmopolitan Makeover for a Tidewater Backwater - New York Times
• Official Paper Model