30
March
2017
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09:00 AM
America/New_York

Fact Sheet

  • The Philadelphia Museum of Art’s internationally renowned collection consists of more than 240,000 objects, spanning 4,000 years. An additional 200,000 items are in the Library and Archives. The Museum is a collection of collections, with 65% of objects acquired as gifts.

  • Each year, the Museum attracts an average of 800,000 visitors on-site and nearly 10 million page views on our website: philamuseum.org.

  • The endowment stood at $487 million in 2018 and the annual operating budget was $60 million. By 2020, the It Starts Here campaign aims to increase the Museum’s total endowment to over $500 million.

  • The Museum has 455 full-time employees and 400 volunteers.

  • As a city-owned building, the City of Philadelphia pays the museum’s utilities. As part of Philadelphia’s overall Energy master Plan, the City has also invested $11.3 million in an energy conservation project that is expected to reduce the museum’s utility costs by at least 22 percent, saving the City $750,000 in the first year.

  • The campus consists of the main building, the Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building, the Rodin Museum, and Mount Pleasant and Cedar Grove Park Houses, totaling 1 million+ sq. ft. of property under our care. When the Museum’s main building first opened in 1928, many galleries remained empty, but they were filled over the next three decades.

  • Frank Gehry was selected in 2006 to design the new Facilities Master Plan. The Art Handling Facility was completed in 2012 and the Core Project is currently underway.

  • The Core Project will open a total of gross 90,000 sq. ft. to the public, including 23,000 sq. ft. of new gallery space. After the full Gehry Plan is completed, the galleries will have grown by an additional 55,000 sq. ft. under the East Terrace, for a total of 78,000 sq. ft.

The Collections

  • Exceptional American painting, sculpture, furniture, silver and ceramics—including the remarkable creations of the Shakers and Pennsylvania Germans—reflect Philadelphia’s central role in American history. Among the highlights are the collections of works by Thomas Eakins and Charles Willson Peale and his family of painters.

  • The Museum’s Modern and Contemporary Art galleries house the world’s most extensive display of the works of Marcel Duchamp. Regularly on display are many of the paintings that the artist made early in his career, including Nude Descending the Staircase No 2 (1912), The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), in the exact location where the artist placed it in 1954, and his enigmatic last work, Etant donnés. The museum’s collection of works by Constantin Brancusi is the most significant outside Europe.

  • The European Painting and Sculpture galleries consist of works by old masters, as well as by major artists of the 19th century including Cézanne and Manet, and Impressionists Monet, Renoir, and Degas. The Rodin Museum houses the most important public collection of Rodin’s work outside Paris and includes the first bronze cast of The Gates of Hell.

  • Anchoring European Decorative Arts is the arms and armor collection of Carl Otto Kretzschmar von Kienbusch. Holdings total 20,000 objects, from Renaissance maiolica to Zaha Hadid’s concept car.

  • Prints, Drawings, and Photographs is the largest of the Museum’s curatorial collections, with more than 100,000 objects. Costume and Textiles is the second largest, with 30,000+ objects. Works in both departments are light-sensitive and must be rotated frequently, and therefore are a priority for cataloguing online.

  • East Asian Art numbers 9,000 objects from China, Japan, Korea, and across East Asia: lacquerware, furniture, ceramics, scrolls, paintings, and carpets and other decorative arts. The Museum has collected in this area since our founding in 1876. All three curatorial positions are endowed, and the Museum was the first in the United States to endow a curator of Korean art.

  • South Asian Art includes work from India, Nepal, Tibet, and across South Asia. Philadelphia is the only place outside India where visitors can see an Indian temple, complete with architecture and sculpture.

  • On average, 375 works of art travel across the world to exhibitions at 100+ peer institutions each year, making the Museum one of the most generous lenders. Exhibitions organized by the Museum frequently travel to international venues; recent examples include Paul Strand: Master of Modern Photography, Discovering the Impressionists: Paul Durand-Ruel and the New Painting , Modern Times: American Art, 1910–1950, and The Essential Duchamp.

  • Each year, Conservation examines hundreds of objects, undertaking both major and minor treatments. Major recent projects include Augustus Saint Gaudens’s towering figure Diana, Thomas Eakins’s The Gross Clinic, and Diego Rivera’s frescoes Liberation of the Peon and Sugar Cane, and most recently, Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Large Bathers. Every day, objects are cleaned, assessed, preserved, and imaged. Our conservators have even been called upon to help conserve the sculpture of Alexander Stirling Calder atop Philadelphia City Hall, including the figure of William Penn, and to consult on the care of the Liberty Bell.

  • Over 142,000 objects can now be viewed online, and the Museum has over 960,000 followers on social media, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and Snapchat.

  • Approximately 200,000 people, including 65,000 schoolchildren, participate annually in educational programs, including tours, lectures, concerts, workshops, and art history courses. One hundred percent of visiting School District of Philadelphia students receive free admission. Admission is always free for children 12 and under. We have a long-standing commitment to early childhood education.

  • After field trips to the Museum, Philadelphia School District students are given Family Return Museum Passes, which allow them to bring up to 8 family members and friends back to visit for free.

  • Four thousand teachers are served with resources and training opportunities each year, including 20 one-day events, the annual summer Visual Arts as Sources for Teaching program, and in-classroom workshops. For every teacher served, hundreds, if not thousands, of students’ lives are touched.

 

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We are Philadelphia’s art museum. A landmark building. A world-renowned collection. A place that welcomes everyone. We bring the arts to life, inspiring visitors—through scholarly study and creative play—to discover the spirit of imagination that lies in everyone. We connect people with the arts in rich and varied ways, making the experience of the Museum surprising, lively, and always memorable. We are committed to inviting visitors to see the world—and themselves—anew through the beauty and expressive power of the arts.

For additional information, contact the Communications Department of the Philadelphia Museum of Art phone at 215-684-7860, by fax at 215-235-0050, or by e-mail at pressroom@philamuseum.org. The Philadelphia Museum of Art is located on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway at 26th Street. For general information, call (215) 763-8100.