The American Museum of Natural History

The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH), located on the Upper West Side <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_West_Side> of Manhattan <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan> in New York City <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City>, United States <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States>, is one of the largest and most celebrated museums <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum> in the world. Located in park-like grounds across the street from Central Park <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park>, the Museum comprises 25 interconnected buildings that house 46 permanent exhibition halls, research laboratories, and its renowned library.collections contain over 32 million specimens, of which only a small fraction can be displayed at any given time. The Museum has a scientific staff of more than 200, and sponsors over 100 special field expeditions each year.Museum was founded in 1869. Prior to construction of the present complex, the Museum was housed in the older Arsenal building <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenal_(Central_Park)> in Central Park <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park>. Theodore Roosevelt, Sr. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roosevelt,_Sr.>, the father of the 26th U.S. President <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roosevelt>, was one of the founders along with John David Wolfe, William T. Blodgett, Robert L. Stuart, Andrew H. Green <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Haswell_Green>, Robert Colgate, Morris K. Jesup <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Ketchum_Jesup>, Benjamin H. Field, D. Jackson Steward, Richard M. Blatchford, J. Pierpont Morgan <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Pierpont_Morgan>, Adrian Iselin, Moses H. Grinnell <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_H._Grinnell>, Benjamin B. Sherman, A. G. Phelps Dodge <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anson_Dodge>, William A. Haines, Charles A. Dana <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Anderson_Dana>, Joseph H. Choate <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Hodges_Choate>, Henry G. Stebbins <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_G._Stebbins>, Henry Parish, and Howard Potter. The founding of the Museum realized the dream of naturalist Dr. Albert S. Bickmore <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_S._Bickmore>. Bickmore, a one-time student of Harvard <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard> zoologist <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoologist> Louis Agassiz <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Agassiz>, lobbied tirelessly for years for the establishment of a natural history museum in New York. His proposal, backed by his powerful sponsors, won the support of the Governor of New York <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governor_of_New_York>, John Thompson Hoffman <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Thompson_Hoffman>, who signed a bill officially creating the American Museum of Natural History on April 6, 1869.1874, the cornerstone was laid for the Museum's first building, which is now hidden from view by the many buildings in the complex that today occupy most of Manhattan Square. The original Victorian Gothic <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_Revival_architecture>building, which was opened in 1877, was designed by Calvert Vaux <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvert_Vaux> and J. WreyMould <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Wrey_Mould>, both already closely identified with the architecture of Central Park. It was soon eclipsed by the south range of the Museum, designed by J. Cleaveland Cady <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Cleaveland_Cady>, an exercise in rusticated brownstone neo-Romanesque <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richardsonian_Romanesque>, influenced by H. H. Richardson <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Hobson_Richardson>. It extends 700 feet (210 m) along West 77th Street, with corner towers 150 feet (46 m) tall. Its pink brownstone and granite, similar to that found at Grindstone Island <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grindstone_Island> in the St. Lawrence River <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Lawrence_River>, came from quarries at Picton Island, New York. The entrance on Central Park West <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park_West>, the New York State Memorial to Theodore Roosevelt, completed by John Russell Pope <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Russell_Pope> in 1936, is an overscaled Beaux-Arts <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaux-Arts_architecture> monument. It leads to a vast Roman basilica, where visitors are greeted with a cast of a skeleton of a rearing Barosaurus <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barosaurus> defending her young from an Allosaurus <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allosaurus>. The Museum is also accessible through its 77th street foyer, renamed the "Grand Gallery" and featuring a fully suspended Haida <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haida_people> canoe. The hall leads into the oldest extant exhibit in the Museum, the hall of Northwest Coast Indians <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North-West_Coast_Indians>.1930 little has been added to the original building. The Museum's south front, spanning 77th Street from Central Park West to Columbus Avenue <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_Avenue_(Manhattan)> was cleaned, repaired and re-emerged in 2009. Steven Reichl, a spokesman for the Museum, said that work would include restoring 650 black-cherry window frames and stone repairs. The Museum’s consultant on the latest renovation is Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiss,_Janney,_Elstner_Associates,_Inc.>, an architectural and engineering firm with headquarters inNorthbrook, IL <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northbrook,_IL>.Museum boasts habitat dioramas <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diorama> of African, Asian and North American mammals <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammals>, a full-size model of a Blue Whale <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Whale> suspended in the Milstein Family Hall of Ocean Life, sponsored by the family of Paul Milstein <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Milstein> (reopened in 2003), a 62 foot (19 m) Haida carved and painted war canoe <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canoe> from the Pacific Northwest <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Northwest>, a massive 31 ton piece of the Cape York meteorite <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_York_meteorite>, and the Star of India <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_of_India_(gem)>, the largest starsapphire <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapphire> in the world. The circuit of an entire floor is devoted to vertebrate <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertebrate> evolution <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution>.Museum has extensive anthropological collections: Asian People, Pacific People, Man in Africa, American Indian <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_United_States> collections, general Native American <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas> collections, and collections from Mexico <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico> and Central America <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_America> [ 2 ].

The Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art (stylized MoMA) is an art museum <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_museum> located in Midtown <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midtown_(Manhattan)> Manhattan <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan> in New York City <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City>, United States <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States>, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_art>, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world.The museum's collection offers an unparalleled overview in modern and contemporary art, including works of architecture <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture> and design <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design>, drawings <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drawings>, painting <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painting>,sculpture <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sculpture>, photography <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photography>, prints <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenprints>, illustrated books <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illustrated_books> and artist's books <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist%27s_books>, film <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film>, and electronic media <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_media>.'s library and archives hold over 300,000 books, artist books, and periodicals, as well as individual files on more than 70,000 artists. The archives contain primary source material related to the history of modern and contemporary art <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_art>. It also houses an award-winning fine dining restaurant, The Modern, run by Alsace <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alsace>-born chef Gabriel Kreuther.idea for The Museum of Modern Art was developed in 1928 primarily by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abby_Aldrich_Rockefeller> (wife of John D. Rockefeller Jr. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Rockefeller_Jr.>) and two of her friends, Lillie P. Bliss <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillie_P._Bliss> and Mary Quinn Sullivan <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Quinn_Sullivan>. They became known variously as "the Ladies", "the daring ladies" and "the adamantine ladies". They rented modest quarters for the new museum in rented spaces in the Heckscher Building at 730 Fifth Avenue (corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street) in Manhattan, and it opened to the public on November 7, 1929, nine days after the Wall Street Crash <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_Crash>. Abby had invited A. Conger Goodyear <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=A._Conger_Goodyear&action=edit&redlink=1>, the former president of the board of trustees of the Albright Art Gallery <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albright-Knox_Art_Gallery> in Buffalo, New York <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo,_New_York>, to become president of the new museum. Abby became treasurer. At the time, it was America's premier museum devoted exclusively to modern art, and the first of its kind in Manhattan to exhibit European modernism.enlisted Paul J. Sachs <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_J._Sachs> and Frank Crowninshield <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Crowninshield> to join him as founding trustees. Sachs, the associate director and curator of prints and drawings at theFogg Art Museum <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogg_Art_Museum> at Harvard University <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University>, was referred to in those days as a collector of curators. Goodyear asked him to recommend a director and Sachs suggested Alfred H. Barr Jr. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Barr>, a promising young protege. Under Barr's guidance, the museum's holdings quickly expanded from an initial gift of eight prints and one drawing. Its first successful loan exhibition was in November 1929, displaying paintings by Van Gogh <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Gogh>, Gauguin <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauguin>, Cйzanne <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9zanne>, and Seurat <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seurat>.housed in six rooms of galleries and offices on the twelfth floor of Manhattan's Heckscher Building, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, the museum moved into three more temporary locations within the next ten years. Abby's husband was adamantly opposed to the museum (as well as to modern art itself) and refused to release funds for the venture, which had to be obtained from other sources and resulted in the frequent shifts of location. Nevertheless, he eventually donated the land for the current site of the museum, plus other gifts over time, and thus became in effect one of its greatest benefactors [ 2 ].that time it initiated many more exhibitions of noted artists, such as the lone Vincent van Gogh <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh> exhibition on November 4, 1935. Containing an unprecedented sixty-six oils and fifty drawings from the Netherlands <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands>, and poignant excerpts from the artist's letters, it was a major public success and became "a precursor to the hold van Gogh has to this day on the contemporary imagination".museum also gained international prominence with the hugely successful and now famous Picasso <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picasso> retrospective of 1939-40, held in conjunction with the Art Institute of Chicago <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Institute_of_Chicago>. In its range of presented works, it represented a significant reinterpretation of Picasso for future art scholars and historians. This was wholly masterminded by Barr, a Picasso enthusiast, and the exhibition lionized Picasso as the greatest artist of the time, setting the model for all the museum's retrospectives that were to follow.by many to have the best collection of modern Western masterpieces in the world, MoMA's holdings include more than 150,000 individual pieces in addition to approximately 22,000 films and 4 million film stills. The collection houses such important and familiar works as the following: The Starry Night <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Starry_Night> by Vincent van Gogh <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh>, The Sleeping Gypsy <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sleeping_Gypsy> by Henri Rousseau <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Rousseau>, The Dream <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_(painting)> by Henri Rousseau <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Rousseau>, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Demoiselles_d%27Avignon> by Pablo Picasso <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso>, The Persistence of Memory <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Persistence_of_Memory> by Salvador Dalн <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Dal%C3%AD>, Broadway Boogie Woogie <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadway_Boogie_Woogie> by Piet Mondrian <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piet_Mondrian>,etc [ 10, p. 53-54 ].

The National Gallery of Art

National Gallery of Art is a national art museum <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_museum>, located on the National Mall <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Mall> in Washington, D.C. Open to the public free of charge, the museum was established in 1937 for the people of the United States of America by a joint resolution of the United States Congress <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Congress>, with funds for construction and a substantial art collection donated by Andrew W. Mellon <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_W._Mellon>. Additionally, the core collection has major works of art donated by Paul Mellon <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Mellon>, Ailsa Mellon Bruce <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ailsa_Mellon_Bruce>, Lessing J. Rosenwald <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lessing_J._Rosenwald>, Samuel Henry Kress <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Henry_Kress>, Rush Harrison Kress <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Henry_Kress>, Peter Arrell Brown Widener <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Arrell_Brown_Widener>, Joseph E. Widener <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_E._Widener> and Chester Dale <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_Dale>. The Gallery's collection of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, medals, and decorative arts traces the development of Western Art from the Middle Ages to the present, including the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci> in the Americas and the largest mobile ever created by Alexander Calder <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Calder>.Gallery's campus includes the original neoclassical West Building designed by John Russell Pope <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Russell_Pope>, which is linked underground to the modern East Building designed by I. M. Pei <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I._M._Pei>, and the 6.1-acre (25,000 m²) Sculpture Garden. Temporary special exhibitions spanning the world and the history of art are presented frequently.National Gallery of Art has one of the finest art collections in the world. It was created for the people of the United States of America by a joint resolution of Congress <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Congress> accepting the gift of financier, public servant, and art collector Andrew W. Mellon <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_W._Mellon> in 1937. European and American paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photographs, and decorative arts are displayed in the collection galleries and Sculpture Garden. The permanent collection of paintings spans from the Middle Ages to the present day. The strongest collection is the Italian Renaissance <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Renaissance> collection, which includes two panels from Duccio <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duccio>'s Maesta <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maest%C3%A0_(Duccio)>, the great tondo <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tondo_(art)> of the Adoration of the Magi <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoration_of_the_Magi> by Fra Angelico <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fra_Angelico> and Filippo Lippi <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filippo_Lippi>, a Botticelli <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botticelli> on the same subject, Giorgione <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgione>'s Allendale Nativity <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allendale_Nativity>, Bellini <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Bellini>'s The Feast of the Gods <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feast_of_the_Gods_(Bellini)>, the only Leonardo <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci> painting in the Americas, Ginevra de' Benci <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginevra_de%27_Benci>; and significant groups of works by Titian <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titian> and Raphael <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphael>. However, the other European collections include examples of the work of many of the great masters of western painting,including Grьnewald <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_Gr%C3%BCnewald>, Dьrer <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albrecht_D%C3%BCrer>, Hals <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frans_Hals>, Rembrandt <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rembrandt>, Vermeer <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermeer>, Goya <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goya>, Ingres <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingres>, and Delacroix <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Delacroix>, among others. The collection of sculpture and decorative arts is admittedly not quite as rich as this, but includes such works as the Chalice of Abbot Suger <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbot_Suger> of St-Denis <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St-Denis> and a superb collection of work by Rodin <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_Rodin> and Degas <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degas>[ 10, p. 55-56 ].