The McNay Art Museum, founded in 1954 in San Antonio, is the first modern art museum in the U.S. state of Texas. The museum was created by Marion Koogler McNay's original bequest of most of her fortune, her important art collection and her 24-room Spanish Colonial Revival-style mansion that sits on 23 acres that are landscaped with fountains, broad lawns and a Japanese-inspired garden and fishpond.
McNay was an American painter and art teacher who inherited a substantial oil fortune upon the death of her father. The museum was named after her, and has been expanded to include galleries of medieval and Renaissance artwork and a larger collection of 20th-century European and American modernist work. She built a home in 1927 designed by Atlee Ayres and his son Robert M. Ayres. Upon her death, the house was bequeathed to the City of San Antonio to house the museum.The museum focuses primarily on 19th- and 20th-century European and American art by such artists as Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Georgia O'Keeffe, Diego Rivera, Mary Cassatt, and Edward Hopper. The collection today consists of over 20,000 objects and is one of the finest collections of contemporary art and sculpture in the Southwestern United States. The museum also is home to the Tobin Collection of Theatre Arts, which is one of the premiere collections of its kind in the U.S., and a research library with over 30,000 volumes. More recently, the McNay Art Museum recently added the Stieren Center, built by internationally renowned architect Jean-Paul Viguier, to display their Modern collection.
The San Antonio Museum of Art is an art museum in Downtown San Antonio, Texas, USA. With a collection spanning 5,000 years of global culture, SAMA is the only encyclopedic museum of fine art in South Texas. The Museum is housed in the historic former Lone Star Brewery on the Museum Reach of the San Antonio River Walk. Following a $7.2 million renovation, it opened to the public in March 1981.
Our Lady of the Lake University , known locally as the Lake, is a Catholic university in San Antonio, Texas. It was founded in 1895 by the Sisters of Divine Providence, a religious institute originating in Lorraine, France, during the 18th century. The Texas chapter of the institute still sponsors the university. Our Lady of the Lake University was the first San Antonio institution of higher education to receive regional accreditation and its Worden School of Social Service is the oldest Social Work school in Texas.
The Witte Museum was established in 1926 and is located in Brackenridge Park in San Antonio, Texas. It is dedicated to telling the stories of Texas, from prehistory to the present. The permanent collection features historic artifacts and photographs, Texas art, textiles, dinosaur bones, cave drawings, and Texas wildlife dioramas, in addition to nationally acclaimed traveling exhibits. Artwork in the collection includes sculpture by San Antonio-born Bonnie MacLeary.The Witte Museum is named after San Antonio businessman Alfred G. Witte, who bequeathed $65,000 to the city for construction of a museum of art, science, and natural history to be built in memory of his parents. The first Director of the Witte Museum was Ellen Schulz Quillin.
