National Gallery, London, London, one of the principal art galleries in Britain and among the most important in the world, located in Trafalgar Square, and opened in 1838. The gallery, in Greek Revival style, was designed by William Wilkins and built in 1833-1887. It was considerably enlarged by the addition of the Sainsbury Wing, financed by members of the Sainsbury family (founders of the British supermarket chain) and designed by Robert Venturi, which opened in 1991.

The idea of establishing a national gallery grew out of concern for protecting Britain's artistic heritage caused by the sale of Sir Robert Walpole's collection to Catherine of Russia. The national collection grew from paintings presented to the nation, in 1823, by the collector and connoisseur Sir George Beaumont and a government purchase, in 1824, of 38 works from the collection of the merchant John Julius Angerstein, in whose house in Pall Mall they were initially displayed.

The National Gallery now has over 2,000 works representing the principal schools of European painting from the 13th century to the 20th century. Its collection of Italian Renaissance paintings, displayed in the Sainsbury Wing, represents almost all the great Florentine and Venetian painters of that period and is the most comprehensive outside Italy. Dutch and Flemish painters are also strongly represented, as are French and Spanish painters of the 15th to the 19th centuries.

Notable works include Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife, by Jan van Eyck; Venus and Mars, by Botticelli; the Leonardo Cartoon (a preparatory drawing that Leonardo da Vinci executed for The Virgin and Child with St Anne and the Infant St John); A Young Woman Standing by a Virginal, by Jan Vermeer; Woman Taken in Adultery, by Rembrandt; The Judgment of Paris, by Rubens; Portrait of a Man, by Titian; The Emtombment, by Michelangelo; The Rokeby Venus, by Velázquez; and Les Parapluies, by Renoir. www.nationalgallery.org.uk/ (recently upgraded site)  

Tate Gallery, London, one of Britain's major art galleries, tracing the evolution of British painting from the Tudors to the present day. It was founded in 1897 by the sugar magnate Sir Henry Tate, who had offered his collection of modern British paintings to the nation in 1890. To these were added other collections of British art previously bequeathed or presented to the nation, and the bequest by J. M. W. Turner of his paintings and watercolours. Although at the outset, the intention had been to found a gallery that would adequately represent modern British art, the Tate now encompasses British art from the 16th century to c. 1900 (notably works by William Hogarth, William Blake, and John Constable), art by British artists born since 1860, the work of foreign artists from the Impressionist period to the present day, and international modern sculpture. The adjacent Clore Gallery, opened in 1987, houses the Turner Bequest. The Tate Gallery also mounts important loan exhibitions of British and modern art. http://www.tate.org.uk/

British Museum, national museum of antiquities and, until 1973, the national library of Great Britain, located in Bloomsbury, central London. The British Museum was founded in 1753, incorporating the collection of the British physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane; the Harleian Collection, formed by the statesman Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford; and the Cottonian Library, organized by the antiquarian Sir Robert Cotton. In 1852 the building in Great Russell Street was completed. It now houses ten departments of antiquities and part of the British Library. The Department of Prints and Drawings contains a major collection of European graphic art from the late Middle Ages to the present. http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk (new address)    Back to Top

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, privately funded museum of fine art, located in Boston, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1870 by the Massachusetts Legislature, and opened to the public in 1876. Originally housed in Copley Square, the collections moved in 1909 to their current location in the Fenway district. The building was designed by the American architect Guy Lowell and features a grand rotunda with ceiling paintings by John Singer Sargent . The most recent addition to the building is its west wing, designed by I. M. Pei and completed in 1981.

The museum is divided into nine departments: Classical; Asiatic; ancient Egyptian, Nubian, and Near Eastern; European decorative arts and sculpture; American decorative arts and sculpture; paintings; contemporary; prints, drawings, and photographs; and textiles and costumes. The collections range from ancient history to the present and include such pieces as the silver Liberty Bowl created by Paul Revere, portraits of George Washington and Martha Washington painted by Gilbert Charles Stuart (the former is used on the United States one-dollar bill, and both are national treasures that are shared with the National Gallery in Washington, D. C., on a rotating basis), ancient Egyptian sculpture, work by the Italian sculptor Donatello, and a number of works by Claude Monet. The gallery's exhibition space is 19,137 sq m (205,994 sq ft).

About 800,000 people visit the museum each year. In addition to its galleries, collections, and traveling exhibitions, the museum organizes educational events, lectures, concerts, and films for adults, children, and families. http://www.mfa.org/ 

Fitzwilliam Museum, the museum and art gallery of the University of Cambridge, and the oldest public museum in Britain. The museum was founded in 1816, when Richard, 7th Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion bequeathed to the university a collection of 144 paintings and 130 illuminated manuscripts, as well as books and prints, along with £100,000 for the construction of a museum building. This was built to a design in Greek Revival style by George Basevi, a pupil of Sir John Soane; the interior was completed by C. R. Cockerell and the entrance hall by Sir Charles Barry. The museum opened in 1848.

On display are an important collection of Egyptian, Classical, and West Asiatic antiquities; Islamic and Oriental art; paintings, including works by Titian, Gainsborough, Reynolds, and the Impressionists; prints and drawings; illuminated manuscripts, coins and medals, and the applied arts, particularly European ceramics, glass, and Armour. Also on view is a portrait of Viscount Fitzwilliam as an undergraduate of the university.

  http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/     Back to Top

National Maritime Museum Greenwich, London, museum of maritime history, with ship models, navigational instruments, and relics relating to distinguished sailors and events. It is situated on the south bank of the River Thames and was established in 1934. The museum incorporates three distinct elements: the National Maritime Museum itself, which originated in the 18th century as the Royal Naval Museum; the Royal Observatory, instituted by Charles II in 1675 and designed by Sir Christopher Wren; and the Queen's House, a Palladian-style villa designed by Indigo Jones c. 1614 for Queen Henrietta Maria. The museum's original holdings have been substantially expanded by gifts and purchases, the most notable being the important collections of paintings and of maritime and scientific archive material belonging to the wealthy Scots ship owner Sir James Caird, who died in 1954.

The fine art collections are among the most important of their kind and include the largest group of 17th-century Dutch marine painting in the world. There is also a superb representation of British marine painting ranging from the 18th to the 20th centuries, with works by Brooking, J. M. W. Turner, and Wyllie, among many others, as well as numerous portraits of distinguished naval and maritime figures by artists such as Sir Peter Lely, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Thomas Gainsborough.  http://www.nmm.ac.uk/Index.htm 

New York is the foremost cultural centre of the United States. Its most famous cultural institutions include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Frick Collection, the Pierpont Morgan Library, the Jewish Museum, the National Museum of the American Indian (1922; reorganized 1993 as the George Gustav Heye Center of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian), the American Museum of Natural History, the International Wildlife Conservation Park (commonly known as the Bronx Zoo), the New York Botanical Garden, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and the Brooklyn Museum. Other major museums in the state include the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, in Buffalo; the New York State Museum (1836)    Back to Top