Art Museum History

In 1910, a City Federation of Women's Clubs charged with promoting Municipal Beauty founded the Art Association of Grand Rapids. Under the leadership of Mrs. Cyrus E. Perkins, a community cultural leader, the committee recommended the establishment of an art collection as a basis for a future art museum. With an initial budget of $444, the Association was able to acquire eleven paintings, appoint Mrs. W.B. Willard, a local artist, the First Director (of Exhibitions), and organize their first art exhibition in January, 1911. 

Nationally known as a manufacturing center for fine quality wood furniture, Grand Rapids had a population of 275,000 in 1900. In 1908 Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Meyer May House at 450 Madison Street for a Michigan department store executive; and in 1909 Alice Roosevelt Longworth arrived in Grand Rapids to lay the cornerstone for a new Federal building. It opened in 1911 and housed law courts and a central post office. 

Mrs. Perkins served as President of the Art Association for the next six years, attending national conferences of the American Federation of the Arts and working to establish contacts with Art organizations in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis. She became a collector of prints and remained an important contributor to the museum's print collection for the next thirty years. 

In 1912 the Grand Rapids Art Association played a leading role in forming the Michigan Federation of the Arts. For the next twelve years, the Association held exhibitions in a variety of downtown locations, including St. Cecilia Music Society and the Ryerson Public Library. 

In 1924, with a gift of $50,000 from Mrs. Emily Clark, a wealthy local patron of the arts, the Association purchased a Greek revival home at 230 Fulton Street, and established the Grand Rapids Art Gallery. In 1928, fireproof galleries were added, and in 1930, an auditorium. 

In 1938 a museum auxiliary called, "Friends of American Art," was formed to sponsor exhibitions, lectures, and films. That same year, the Gallery transformed its auditorium into an Art Gallery School, where art classes were offered for credit accepted by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and The Detroit Institute of the Arts. In 1947, the School became part of The University of Michigan extension program. In 1950 a vault for art storage was added to the building, and in 1963 it was renamed the Grand Rapids Art Museum. 

In 1949, Gerald R. Ford of Grand Rapids was sworn into the House of Representatives where he served for the next 25 years. By 1950, the population of Grand Rapids had grown to 550,000. In 1957 the Women's Committee was formed to sponsor exhibitions with profits from a museum gift shop. In 1969 Mrs. Lois McBride, wife of then Director Walter McBride, formed a Library Guild to support the growth of the art reference library and organize it in a professional manner.

In 1969 Alexander Calder's monumental sculpture La Grande Vitesse (The Great Swiftness) was installed at Vandenberg Center, an outdoor plaza in the midst of downtown government, banking, and business towers. Now considered one of Calder's best large-scale sculptures, La Grande Vitesse was the first public sculpture in the country to receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Peter M. Wege, who served as President of the Art Museum Board of Trustees in 1968-69, chaired the campaign to fund the sculpture. Fellow Art Museum Trustees, Miner S. and Mary Ann Keeler worked on the campaign. Calder visited the city often during the work process and produced several related prints now in the museum collection. In 1973, Sculpture Off The Pedestal was organized by the Women's Committee of the Grand Rapids Art Museum. This innovative exhibition installed contemporary sculpture in public places throughout the city. The exhibition was supported by a grant from the NEA and won regional and national attention. The museum collection includes several maquettes from the exhibition. 

In 1973, Gerald Ford was appointed Vice President of the United States following the resignation of Spiro Agnew. In August 1974, following the resignation of Richard Nixon, he became the 38th President of the United States. In Grand Rapids with the capacity of the museum facility strained, the Board of Trustees initiated a search for a new location. In 1978, the City of Grand Rapids offered to lease the historic Federal building to the museum for $1.00 per year. A $3 million capital campaign, led by John Canepa and John Bissell, provided funds for renovation of three floors of the landmark building. On September 17, 1981 the Grand Rapids Art Museum opened with Gerald Ford presiding over the celebration. 

In 1983 the Grand Rapids Art Museum received its first national accreditation by the American Association of Art Museums. Average attendance during the 1980s was 45,000 visitors annually. In 1991, the museum established an endowment of $400,000 to provide ongoing funds to operate. 

In 1987, Arts Alive, a social organization for young people, was created to expand museum membership. In 1995, in order to recruit men as museum volunteers, the Women's Committee was renamed GRAM Associates. In 1999 the GRAM Associates became part of the Grand Rapids Art Museum Volunteer Association, which administers all areas of museum volunteerism. 

In 1997, the museum organized the international exhibition, Perugino, Master of the Italian Renaissance, a sister-city project with Perugia, Italy. With major sponsorship from Jay and Betty Van Andel and Richard and Helen DeVos, the small, scholarly exhibition consisted of thirty-five paintings and drawings by Perugino and his followers, including nine loans from Perugia. The exhibition drew great praise and attention to the museum and marked the return home to Grand Rapids of Peter Secchia, the U.S. Ambassador to Italy. In 1998, the museum organized Mathias Alten: Journey of An American Painter, the first retrospective of Michigan’s leading turn-of-the-century painter. The exhibition was sponsored by Frey Foundation. In 1999 the museum organized and presented its second international loan exhibition sponsored by Van Andel and DeVos Foundations, A Moral Compass: 17th and 18th century Painting in The Netherlands. In 2000 the museum organized Unending Frontier: Art of the West in association with the Charles M. Russell Center for the Study of Art of the American West. Peter Hassrick served as curator and Senator Alan Simpson opened the exhibition sponsored by Peter Wege and Peter Cook. A Moral Compass, Mathias Alten, and Unending Frontier included loans from local collections. Scholarly catalogues accompanied all four exhibitions.

Loan exhibitions organized by the museum in collaboration with Yale Center for British Art (Canaletto to Constable), National Gallery of Canada (Paris 1890), and Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum (The American Spirit: Church, Moran, Homer) continued to raise the museum’s regional and national profile and build institutional strength. In 1997 museum memberships totalled 930, and in 2000 memberships exceeded 1400, a 45% increase over three years. In 2000 the museum won an unqualified reaccreditation from AAM.

In October 2001, the museum presented Light Screens: The Leaded Glass of Frank Lloyd Wright for which the museum secured Steelcase Inc. as both a local and national sponsor. The exhibition and catalogue contributed new scholarship on Wright and attracted 64,000 visitors, record attendance for a single exhibition. The museum organized a two-day, two-city symposium on architecture with the Department of Design and Architecture at The Art Institute of Chicago.

In November 2001, the museum announced a $20 million lead gift from Wege Foundation and acquisition of a site at Monroe Center adjacent to Maya Lin’s Ecliptic for a new museum building at the center of the downtown. Three quarters of the 1.5 acre site was a gift of the Downtown Development Authority through the effort of Mayor John Logie, and one quarter was purchased by the museum from private owners. Peter Wege stipulated three requirements for his gift. The new museum must be a building of architectural quality; it must be LEED certified; and it must include an educational area that would teach children about the visual arts.

A $350,000 grant from the Grand Rapids Community Foundation supported an architect selection process and conceptual design phase for the new building. The committee agreed to seek an architect of emerging talent and in June 2002 retained M+M, a London based firm, to create a concept design. In late 2003, the committee leadership determined that an architect of emerging talent with specific experience in museum design and construction was needed. Kulapat Yantrasast, a longtime associate of Tadao Ando, was introduced to the project. Kulapat and his partner Yo Hakomori of wHY Architecture, Los Angeles, began work as design architects for the new museum in March 2004. Construction of the new museum began in September 2004 and concluded in August 2007.

A $75 million capital campaign to finance construction of the new museum began in 2003 and successfully concluded in early 2007 with an additional $8 million raised for operating endowment. Honorary Campaign Chairs were Peter Wege, Richard DeVos, and Lena Meijer. Managing Chair of the Campaign was Kate Pew Wolters.  Campaign Co-Chairs were Pamella DeVos, Sam Cummings, and Hank Meijer. Building Committee Chairs were Michael Ellis and Sam Cummings with Vice Chairs Michael Love and Scott Weirda.

During construction from 2004 to 2007, the museum continued to organize and present programs and exhibitions in the former Federal building. Brücke, Modern Masters of German Expressionism a joint project with the Milwaukee Art Museum was the only exhibition organized nationally in recognition of the centennial of the first modern movement in 20th century art. The exhibition was sponsored by Wege and Meijer Foundations. A symposium with curators from the Art Institute of Chicago, Milwaukee Art Museum, and Grand Rapids Art Museum accompanied the exhibition. 

Drawn from Nature: The Plant Lithographs of Ellsworth Kelly was organized by the museum and opened March 2005, traveling to the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth University, Tate Gallery St. Ives, England, and AXA Gallery, New York, was the first internationally touring exhibition organized by the museum. It was sponsored in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and the museum was able to acquire the complete seventy-two plant lithographs for the permanent collection. The Plant Lithographs catalogue, published by GRAM in association with Yale University Press, received the "Best Print Publication of 2006"  award by Print Dealers Association, a prize given previously only to the Museum of Modern Art and Rijksmuseum.  The Eames Lounge Chair: An Icon of Modern Designsponsored by Herman Miller was the final exhibition organized and presented in the former Federal Building. The museum and Merrell (London & New York) jointly published a trade book on the Eames Lounge Chair. The exhibition traveled to New York sponsored by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and opened at the Museum of Arts and Design in May 2006. During summer 2006 for the first time in its history, the Grand Rapids Art Museum presented two exhibitions organized by the museum in New York City. In 2007 the art museum closed the former Federal building as its home of twenty-five years (1981–2007) and moved to the new museum at 101 Monroe Center. 

On October 5, 2007, the new Grand Rapids Art Museum opened its first purpose built museum building, ninety-seven years after its founding in 1910. 10,000 visitors attended preview days and opening weekend. An Inaugural Ball chaired by Daniel and Pamella DeVos with attendance of 700 guests raised $500,000 to support first year operations.  A 25-foot wall sculpture titled Blue White by Ellsworth Kelly was commissioned for the lobby of the new museum.The commission was sponsored by Fred and Lena Meijer, Richard and Helen DeVos, and Daniel and Pamella DeVos.

Extensive national coverage by the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Christian Science Monitor, Detroit Free Press, Cleveland Plain Dealer, and Chicago Tribunerecognized the distinction of the museum’s green design and also the quality of its architectural design. GRAM's young design architect, Kulapat Yantrasast, was featured on the cover of Architect magazine as an emerging national talent. The architectural critic ofNewsweek magazine named GRAM one of the six best new buildings of 2007. On March 20, 2008, the museum received confirmation from the Green Building Association of its status as the first LEED Gold certified art museum in the world.

The Grand Rapids Art Museum Endowment grew from $400,000 in 1991 to $1.8 million in 1997. In 1997, the museum received its first acquisition endowment gift designated the David and Judy Frey Endowment for American Art 1840–1950. From 1997 to 2008, the combined operating and acquisition endowment grew to $16 million, with major lead gifts from John and Marilyn Drake and Peter M. Wege. Important recent additions to the collection include the complete set of Dürer’s Engraved Passion, 1507-13; one of the finest known impressions of Rembrandt’s Three Crosses Fourth State, 1653-55; George Inness, Sunset in the Woods, 1883; Winslow Homer, Eight Bells, 1887; Richard Pousette-Dart,Transcendent Presence, 1966-67; Robert Motherwell, Black Figuration on Blue, 1950; Andy Warhol, The Endangered Species, 1983; and Jennifer Bartlett, Small House, 1998-99.

The collection includes over 5,000 works of art: approximately 3,500 works on paper (prints, drawings, and photographs), 1,200 works of design and modern craft (furniture, ceramics, glass, metal and textiles), and 300 paintings and sculptures. The works on paper collection begins in the year 1500 with works by Dürer and extends to contemporary art. The design collection begins in the modern era of the late 19th century and extends to the present. The collection of painting and sculpture is primarily 19th and 20th century American and European.

The current population of the greater metropolitan area of Grand Rapids is 1.1 million. Museum attendance in the first six months of operation in the new museum, October 2007 to April 2008, surpassed 100,000, a record attendance in the museum’s history. In the first month of operation in the new museum, total memberships grew 50% from 2000 to over 3000.

Since the founding year 1910, there have been twelve Directors of the Grand Rapids Art Museum. Current President of the Board of Trustees is Scott Wierda, who has served as President since 2008. Current President of the Museum Foundation is Peter M. Wege II.