The Dale Chihuly ceiling in the connecting hall from SAMA’s main building to the Cowden Gallery is one of the favorite pleasures of the museum. (Look Up, when you are in the connecting hallway!)
The San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA) 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 West Texas. The Museum is housed in the historic, former Lone Star Brewery building (built in 1886) and is on the Museum Reach section of the San Antonio Riverwalk.
Following a $7.2 million renovation, the museum opened to the public in March of 1981.
The museum is situated on the northern section of the Riverwalk, with the opening of the Gloria Galt River Landing in 2009, the museum now anchors the “Museum Reach” expansion.
How did a San Antonio build a museum from scratch in 1981, with the expense of art today?
When the museum opened, it specialized in the “Art of the Americas” (pre-Columbian items, Spanish Colonial art, and Latin America folk art). It also included eighteenth-, nineteenth- and twentieth-century American and European paintings, photography, sculpture, and decorative arts. In 1985, it was lucky enough to received the prestigious collections of Latin American Folk Art formed by former Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller and Robert K. Winn.
In the 1990s, the museum expanded considerably with donations from Gilbert M. Denman, Jr. and the addition of the Stark-Willson Collection which established a comprehensive collection of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman art, plus a collection of Chinese ceramics from trustees Walter F. and Lenora Brown. The Chinese collection, which also included other Asian objects, resulted in a 15,000-square-foot wing (The Lenora and Walter F. Brown Asian Art Wing) which opened in 2005 and is currently the largest Museum for Asian Art in the southern United States.
In 1991, the 7,000-square-foot Cowden Gallery opened to feature traveling exhibitions and in 1994, the 3,000-square-foot Beretta Hops House was renovated to provide a new area for museum education with three classrooms. In 1998, the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Latin American Art, a 30,000-square-foot wing, opened to display Latin American Art Collection.
A recent exhibition in the Cowden Gallery was the “Men of Steel, Women of Wonder” exhibition organized out of Crystal Bridges Museum of Art. These changing exhibitions bring broad art exposure to the patrons in San Antonio, expanding the field of knowledge, and making the museum feel alive, bringing constantly changing electric creativity to the city.
Below are a few artworks from the “Men of Steel, Women of Wonder” exhibition.
The next Traveling Exhibition to be shown at the Cowden Gallery will be Victorian Radicals: From the Pre-Raphaelites to the Arts & Crafts Movement from October 11, 2019, through January 05, 2020.
The San Antonio Museum of Art is also a place for art lovers to socialize. Below is a happy hour for patrons and visitors of the museum, with a cash bar and a local band performing for the crowd on their patio/courtyard.
The Art Museum of San Antonio is easy to get to, by a city bus (bus stops in front of the museum, coming and going), by car, by walking down the Riverwalk and it is also a stop on the Hop on – Hop off Bus Tours.
Hours:
Tuesdays 10 am until 9 pm (Free Admission on Tuesdays)
Monday through Sunday from 10 am until 5 pm.
The Art Museum of San Antonio
200 West Jones Avenue
San Antonio, TX 78215
201.978.8100
(Source: ARTS&FOOD staff visit and research, plus the website for The San Antonio Museum of Art)
