The Walters Art Museum, located in Mount Vernon-Belvedere, Baltimore, Maryland, United States, is a public art museum founded and opened in 1934. It holds collections established during the mid-19th century. The Museum’s collection was amassed substantially by significant American art and sculpture collectors, a father and son: William Thompson Walters (1819–1894), who began collecting when he moved to Paris as a nominal Southern/Confederate sympathizer at the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861; and Henry Walters (1848–1931), who refined the collection and made arrangements for the construction of a later landmark building to rehouse it. After allowing the Baltimore public to occasionally view his father’s and his growing added collections at his West Mount Vernon Place townhouse/mansion during the late 1800s, he arranged for an elaborate stone palazzo-styled structure built for that purpose in 1905–1909 and located across the back alley, a block south of the Walters mansion on West Monument Street/Mount Vernon Place, on the northwest corner of North Charles Street at West Centre Street.
In 2000, “The Walters Art Gallery” changed its long-time name to “The Walters Art Museum” to reflect its image as a large public institution and eliminate confusion among some of the increasing out-of-state visitors. The following year, “The Walters” (often known locally) reopened its original main building after a dramatic three-year physical renovation and replacement of internal utilities and infrastructure. The Archimedes Palimpsest was on loan to the Walters Art Museum from a private collector for conservation and spectral imaging studies. Bed Bug Exterminator Baltimore
Permanent Collection
Ancient Art
The Walters’ collection of ancient art includes examples from Egypt, Nubia, Greece, Rome, Etruria, and the Near East. Highlights include two monumental 3,000-pound statues of the Egyptian lion-headed fire goddess Sekhmet on long-term loan from the British Museum; the Walters Mummy; alabaster reliefs from the palace of Ashurnasirpal II; Greek gold jewelry, including the Greek bracelets from Olbia on the shores of the Black Sea; the Praxitelean Satyr; a large assemblage of Roman portrait heads; a Roman bronze banquet couch, and marble sarcophagi from the tombs of the prominent Licinian and Calpurnian families.
Asian Art
Highlights of the Asian art collection assembled earlier by Baltimorean father and son collectors William T. and Henry Walters include Japanese arms and armor and Chinese and Japanese porcelains, lacquers, and metalwork. Among the museum’s outstanding works of Asian art are a late-12th- or early-13th-century Cambodian bronze of the eight-armed Avalokiteshvara, a T’ang Dynasty earthenware camel, and an intricately painted Ming Dynasty wine jar. The museum owns the oldest surviving Chinese wood-and-lacquer image of the Buddha (late 6th century AD). It is exhibited in a gallery dedicated solely to this work.
Address: 600 N Charles St, Baltimore, MD
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