'', by
Evelyn De Morgan, 1895 Following the opening of the
South Carolina State Museum in 1988, the Columbia Museum of Art and Science eliminated its science component to focus its interests and resources on the role of an art museum. Despite the additional gallery space made available by the removal of the science displays and the planetarium, by the 1990s the museum had outgrown the Taylor House complex and the 7,000 sq. ft. (650m2) exhibition space there. The site eventually chosen for a new museum building was at the intersection of Main and Hampton Streets. This location was occupied by two adjacent department stores (Belk and Macy's) that then stood deserted. The Belk building was partially demolished to allow for the creation of a public space and sculpture garden, called Boyd Plaza, in front of the new museum. (The rear portion of the Belk building became the framework on which the TD Bank building was built). The 2017 plaza renovation was a gift to the city from the Darnall W. and Susan F. Boyd Foundation Inc. The structural skeleton of the other department-store building, Macy's, provided the steel framework around which the new building was constructed. Designed by architects Bobby Lyles and Ashby Gressette of the Columbia-based firm of Stevens & Wilkinson, Adjacent to the atrium is a 164-seat auditorium; the first-floor galleries are on the far side. Four of these galleries accommodate changing exhibitions and two more display selections of modern and contemporary art from the permanent collection. Twenty galleries on the second floor contain a timeline of the history of European and American art from antiquity to the modern era. A small but significant collection of art and artifacts from the ancient
Mediterranean world is presented in the first gallery. Included in antiquities are examples of early Greek ceramics from the R.V.D. Magoffin Collection, a large black-figured Greek
lekythos acquired in 1973, the Robert L. Hanlin Collection of 4th-century BCE Greek vases from
Southern Italy, Roman glass from the George C. Brauer Collection, and a collection of 12
Greco-Roman marble sculptures donated by Dr. Robert Y. Turner in 2002. The Turner marbles include a headless standing statue of
Hygeia and 11 Roman portrait heads. Old Master European paintings and sculpture from the
Renaissance and
Baroque periods, including art from Kress collection, are also presented. At the former Taylor House, the Kress collection was separated from the rest of the museum's collection; in the new building, the Kress works are integrated into the whole, aiming for chronological continuity and a smoother progression through the history of
Western art. Artists represented include: 's Nativity (1475) •
Bernardo Daddi •
Sandro Botticelli (with his only fresco in an American collection) •
Ambrosius Benson •
Andrea Solario •
Francesco Parmigianino •
Jacopo Tintoretto •
Bernardo Strozzi •
Salvatore Rosa •
Guido Cagnacci •
Jacob van Ruisdael •
Alessandro Magnasco •
Jusepe de Ribera •
François Boucher •
Joshua Reynolds •
George Romney •
Benjamin Wilson •
Giovanni Canaletto •
Francesco Guardi The sequence of the European tradition was interrupted in 2009 by the introduction of gallery space for displaying Chinese works of art donated in 2003 and 2007 by Dr. Robert Y. Turner>ref?. It surveys Chinese art from ca. 2000 BCE to 1400 CE (Xiajiadian culture to
Yuan dynasty) as tomb sculptures from the
Tang dynasty. European and American paintings, sculpture, furniture, and
decorative arts from the 18th to the 20th centuries occupy the remaining galleries on this level. This portion of the museum's collection includes paintings by: •
Gilbert Stuart •
Thomas Sully •
William Scarborough •
Albert Fitch Bellows •
Washington Allston •
William Merritt Chase •
Claude Monet Furniture includes pieces by
Duncan Phyfe,
Gustav Stickley, and
Louis Majorelle; silver by the Hayden brothers of Charleston; stained glass by
Daniel Cottier and the
Tiffany Studios; and ceramics from
Newcomb College. Special collections housed at the museum include drawings in the
Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection and
Bunzlauer pottery from
Eastern Germany. In 2019, the museum exhibited work by
Jasper Johns and his collection of paintings by modern artists such as
Andy Warhol and
Roy Lichtenstein. (He attended USC from 1947 to 1948 and grew up in South Carolina. Johns spent several years living with his aunt Gladys on Lake Murray, which is why there's a children's program at the museum called Gladys' Gang.) The museum also had the exhibition "
Charcoal drawings by Georgia O'Keeffe from 1915" in 2016; she taught at Columbia College in late 1915. It has also had exhibitions by Matisse, Dalí, and Norman Rockwell. Others have included "Turner to Cézanne (with Van Gogh)" in 2009, "Monet to Matisse" in 2013, and a 20-ft. (610 cm) Jackson Pollock mural in 2019. There was the photography exhibition "
Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present" in 2010. ==Other institutions==