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George Walker Vincent Smith Art Museum in Springfield, MA

George Walker Vincent Smith Art Museum in Springfield, MA
21 Edwards St.
Springfield, MA
01103
1-800-625-7738

George Walker Vincent Smith Art Museum in Springfield, MA

The George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum is one of the two Springfield Museums dedicated to fine and decorative arts. It represents the very personal taste of the Victorian collector whose name it bears. The Museum was built in 1895 in the style of an elegant Italian villa and opened to the public in 1896 as the “Art Museum.”

The avid collectors acquired a renowned collection of Japanese arms and armor, including many fine examples from the time of the Samurai; Japanese ivory carvings, intricate lacquers, decorative and utilitarian ceramics; and the largest collection of Chinese cloisonne in the Western world. A focal point of the collection is an elaborately carved Shinto shrine.

The Museum’s collection of Middle Eastern rugs is ranked among the top 10 collections of these objects in the United States. Since many of the rugs were not antique when purchased, they are still in extremely good condition. While oriental rugs were an important part of most Victorian collections, they were usually treated as furnishings. Smith, however, considered rugs to be art objects and hung many of them on the walls next to paintings, elevating them to equal status with the “fine” arts.

Throughout his life G.W.V. Smith supported the American artists of his time. Some of the earliest art works he bought were paintings by artists he knew in New York City in the late 1850s and early 1860s. The Smith collection is especially strong in landscape paintings, particularly those by Hudson River School artists, fine genre paintings, and seascapes by A. T. Bricher. The Museum holds the largest collection of works by J.G. Brown (1831-1913) in a public museum, including the much-reproduced painting, The Berry Boy.

Classical and Renaissance art is represented in the Museum’s rare collection of 48 plaster casts. In Victorian America’s art museums, casts provided what was for most visitors the only contact with ancient sculpture. The casts in the G.W.V. Smith Art Museum are remarkably accurate reproductions of these masterpieces, made from molds taken directly from the originals.

Hasbro Games Art Discovery Center

The elaborately decorated Hasbro Games Art Discovery Center, opened in 2002, offers hands-on activities that introduce families and children to the Museum’s Asian collections. Children can make their own Asian-inspired art, take part in craft activities and try on costumes of Samurais, Sultans, and Victorian gentry. The Discovery Center is a bright, airy space decorated with brilliant hand painted murals that reflect motifs taken from the Museum’s extensive Chinese and Japanese art collections. 

Museums • Attractions in Springfield (MA) Massachusetts •
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