Huntington Museum of Art (Tour)

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Glass manufacture was once a key industry in West Virginia and the Ohio Valley. Although only a handful of factories remain open today, there is still a widespread interest in collecting glass. During the 1970s, the Huntington Museum of Art took note of this phenomenon and began expanding its holdings in early American, mid-Western/Ohio Valley, Art, and Studio Glass. Today, the glass collection is the Museum’s largest, containing more than four thousand objects. The mid-Western/Ohio Valley collection traces the development of glassmaking in the region from the early eighteenth century to the present. The permanent gallery includes many examples of glass from the “golden age” of glassmaking, and also includes several cases of art glass donated by a local collector. The collection also features items created by studio glass artists at invitational exhibitions that the Museum hosted between 1976 and 1988. Currently, the Glass Gallery is undergoing a transition into a Decorative Arts Gallery, which will have displays of glass, silver, and other objects from the Huntington Museum of Art’s permanent collection.

2. James D. Francis Art Library

The James D. Francis Art Library is the only professionally staffed art library in the state of West Virginia. Named after James Draper Francis, a Huntington resident who served as president of the Island Creek Coal Company, it contains over twenty thousand volumes along with a large collection of artists’ files and periodicals. The library’s holdings emphasize American and European art, glass, Islamic art, firearms, silver, contemporary prints, and folk art. With such an extensive collection of books and other materials, the library plays a valuable role in assisting researchers as well as local collectors and museum visitors. The library is open by appointment only, and the materials that it houses are restricted for use in the library. Alongside workshops, competitions, and its outreach program, the James D. Francis Art Library supports the Museum’s mission to provide excellence in art education.

3. Touma Near Eastern Gallery

The Touma Near Eastern Gallery features hundreds of works of art, most of which were donated to the Huntington Museum of Art by Drs. Joseph B. and Omayma Touma between 1991 and 2004. The gallery, which was built in 1996, was designed with the help of the Toumas to provide a cultural context for the collection. The gallery displays ceramics, metalwork, arms and armor, scientific instruments, prayer rugs, manuscripts, furniture, paintings, and other decorative arts from large areas of the Middle East, Ottoman Turkey, Central Asian Republics, the Indian subcontinent, North Africa and Moorish Spain. In the years since the gallery’s creation, portions of the Near Eastern Collection have been showcased at various venues throughout the country as part of traveling exhibits. By sharing their collection, the Toumas hoped to provide a bridge for people to learn about and appreciate unfamiliar histories, cultures, and traditions, and to promote goodwill and peace in a time of upheaval.

4. Herman Dean Firearms Gallery

The Herman P. Dean Firearms Collection is the result of a lifetime of enthusiastic and informed collecting. Mr. Dean, an avid sportsman, historian, and one of the Museum’s founders, was known internationally for his historic firearms collection and his expertise on the subject. The collection was donated in the early years of the Huntington Museum of Art, and traces the use of firearms from the earliest hand cannon through the machine-made weapons of the nineteenth century. Today, the collection holds nearly four hundred items, and is considered one of the finest firearms collections in the United States.

5. C. Fred Edwards Conservatory

The Huntington Museum of Art was founded with the mission to be a proponent for, and an interpreter of, nature as well as art. This mission is manifested in the C. Fred Edwards Conservatory, West Virginia’s only tropical and subtropical plant conservatory. The conservatory, which opened in 1996, features plants that belong to one of four categories: Orchids, Agriculturally Important, Fragrant, and Unusual. There are also two sculptures in the conservatory, a site-specific glass sculpture by Dale Chihuly called the “Huntington Museum of Art Tower” and a more traditional bronze sculpture titled “Play Days” by Harriet Whitney Frishmuth. Along with these sculptures, the Museum has mixed art with nature in a number of its temporary exhibits, including an exhibit that showcased historic textiles alongside displays in the conservatory of silk moth cocoons and specimens. The plants and sculptures in the conservatory can be viewed at any time during regular museum hours.

This Tour is a Virtual Museum or Site Tour.

Huntington Museum of Art

Created by Huntington Museum of Art on February 25th 2014, 2:49:25 am.

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The Huntington Museum of Art has been a point of civic pride for residents of Huntington for close to seven decades. It is widely recognized as the finest art museum in West Virginia and is the largest art museum within the central Appalachian region between Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, and Richmond. The museum is located among the spectacular hills above Ritter Park, on a beautiful 52-acre site where art and nature blend in harmony. Visitors are constantly impressed that such a small city could be home to such an exceptional collection and extraordinary facility that includes walking trails, outdoor sculpture gardens, a lecture hall, art library, and conservatory.

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Huntington Museum of Art

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