DAVIS MUSEUM

The Davis Museum and Cultural Center traces its founding to October 23, 1889 when the original Farnsworth Art Building was dedicated on the Wellesley College campus. However, the collection dates to the opening of the college in 1875, when founder Henry Fowle Durant and his friends began making gifts of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, and plaster casts of classical sculpture. Drawing and painting were part of the first curriculum at the college and the study of art history began at Wellesley in 1885, distinguishing it as one of the first American colleges to offer the subject to its students.

Alice Van Vechten Brown, appointed in 1897 as museum director and head of the art department, modeled the museum after the populist South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) in London. In keeping with Wellesley's emphasis on learning and community service, Brown described the museum as "a place for classes and students, but also a place in which the public may linger and enjoy; a place to bring children, and in which teachers may study; a model to every college student of what a museum may do for any town in the land." Brown is best known for her development of an influential art history curriculum, which focused on the original art object and was later called "the Wellesley Method.”

In 1926, she hired Alfred H. Barr, Jr. as an associate professor. At Wellesley, Barr developed the first modern art course in the United States. It included painting, sculpture, film, photography, architecture, and design-categories Barr used to define the original curatorial departments when he went on to become founding director of the Museum of Modern Art.

John McAndrew, the first curator of architecture at MoMA, was appointed Wellesley College Museum Director in 1947. He built significant art collections, including works by many pioneers of European modernism. In 1958, he moved the museum into expanded quarters in the Jewett Arts Center, designed by Paul Rudolph.

With the opening of Jewett the visual arts at Wellesley entered a new phase. Studios, classrooms, and offices, provided students and faculty with new teaching and work areas. The gallery space offered all a place to study Wellesley’s growing permanent collection and an opportunity to see temporary exhibitions. Jewett provided a stimulating, unique, environment that enhanced Wellesley’s resources for teaching and the cultural experiences available to the entire college community.

In the next decade the museum’s collections expanded significantly when a number of important modern works were donated in honor of John McAndrew. During the directorship of Ann Gabhart (1972-1986) the Museum codified its professional policies, launched new educational programs (including the docent program), and further developed its collections. By 1982 the museum’s holdings had doubled in size and the museum, which previously had been administered by Art Department, became an independent department within the college.

It was also in the early 1980s that the gallery space in Jewett was turned over exclusively to the display of special exhibitions. The need for space in which to exhibit the museum’s permanent collection and the desire maintain Wellesley’s position of leadership in arts education prompted a call for enhanced facilities. In 1984, the Board of Trustees undertook a feasibility study to explore how best to meet the college’s needs for the teaching and presentation of art. The study’s findings, recommending the construction of a new museum on campus and renovations to Jewett, became part of the college’s capital campaign.

In 1988, Trustee and alumna Kathryn Wasserman Davis (Class of 1928) and her husband Shelby Cullom Davis gave the cornerstone gift to the campaign specifically to benefit the construction of a new museum. Their generosity made it possible for Wellesley to conceive of a museum that would provide facilities for the presentation of the collections and temporary exhibitions, and opportunities to enhance the museum’s ties to the broader education mission of the College. With the urging of the Davis’ and under the directorship of Susan Taylor, the planning for the new facility was conceived as both a museum and a cultural center. "We view this place not only as a museum, but as a true cultural destination," stated Susan Taylor, " - a literal and figurative crossroads where students and faculty as well as artists, scholars, and the public can meet to exchange ideas and share in the mingling of disciplines... an environment in which art can educate, inspire, delight, provoke, and, perhaps, compel us to think in new ways while ever being aware of antecedents and traditions. "

In 1989 a search committee selected Raphael Moneo to design the project and in 1991 ground was broken for the Davis Museum and Cultural Center. In October of 1993 the new museum at Wellesley College opened its doors to its students, benefactors and community patrons.

In 1993, the museum entered another era as the Davis Museum and Cultural Center, in a new building designed by Pritzker Architecture Prize winner, Rafael Moneo. This facility, Moneo's first North American project, distinguished the Davis as one of the best college art museums in the country and one of the leading art museums and cultural institutions of the Greater Boston area.

David Mickenberg, the current museum director, was appointed in the fall of 2001 and has refocused the museum’s effort toward building and researching the collection and significantly increasing opportunities for collaboration with students and faculty across all academic disciplines. Under his leadership, the museum has made several important acquisitions and introduced a new adjunct curatorial program with college faculty members, a visiting scholars program, and several new internship opportunities for students.