MUSEUM HISTORY

The Michele & Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts is one of the two Springfield Museums dedicated to fine and decorative arts. The Art Deco-style museum was erected in response to a bequest from Mr. & Mrs. James Philip Gray, who left their entire estate for the “selection, purchase, preservation, and exhibition of the most valuable, meritorious, artistic, and high class oil paintings obtainable,” and for the construction of a museum to house them. The museum opened in 1934.

MUSEUM EXHIBITS

The first floor of the museum is dedicated to American art ranging from John Singleton Copley's Portrait of Nymphas Marston to Winslow Homer's Promenade on the Beach to Contemporary glass sculpture by Dale Chihuly. The American collection also includes the country's only permanent museum gallery dedicated to the lithographs of Currier & Ives.

The second floor is a chronological tour of the museum's fine European art collection. Beginning in the Middle Ages with an intricate 15th-century, Hispano-Flemish Fuentes Retable (altarpiece), the galleries lead visitors through the Renaissance and subsequent centuries with fine paintings from Italy and France. The Dutch and Flemish collection is particularly strong. Familiar names in the Impressionism Gallery include Claude Monet, Degas, Pissarro and Gauguin.

Traveling exhibitions can be found in the Wheeler Gallery. Performances, lectures and presentations are offered in the Davis Auditorium.

COMMUNITY GALLERY

Changing exhibitions in the Community Gallery celebrate the rich and diverse talent of artists in Western Massachusetts. Artists must submit a portfolio to museum staff for consideration. Submission Guidelines