While the nearby Philadelphia Art Museum may be more famous, Delaware has an impressive art museum of their own. This museum has a strong combination of rotating exhibits and permanent ones, along with a sculpture garden. Our Delaware adoption agents love visiting here with our kids when we’re looking for a cultural experience the whole family can enjoy together. Some highlights from one of our recent trips include:
African-American Art: Migration and Modernism
Running until September 2018, this exhibition showcases modern art from Black artists. It includes a variety of paintings, prints, and sculptures from the golden era of African-American modernism, which spanned from the 1920s until the 1970s.
Notable artists featured in this exhibition include:
- Jacob Lawrence
- Romare Bearden
- Aaron Douglas
- Norman Lewis
- Edward Loper, Sr.
- Humbert Howard
- Malvin Gray Johnson
- Robert Neal
- Beulah Ecton Woodard
These artworks were created by artists from all over the country, from Wilmington to Los Angeles. The pieces have been collected by the Museum between 1937 and 2017.
Howard Pyle Murals
The murals of Howard Pyle are one of the most impressive exhibitions in the Museum’s collection. A complete set of nine murals painted by Pyle for the drawing room of his home in Wilmington, Delaware were semi-permanently installed at the Museum in 2015, and are expected to remain there until the end of 2020. The murals have been conserved and cleaned for public display. The complete set of murals is on view for the first time since the 1930s. Pyle began working on them in 1902, and eventually, mural painting took over his whole life. We highly recommend making a stop to see these during your visit.
Eye on Nature: Andrew Wyeth and John Ruskin
American painter Andrew Wyeth and British critic and amateur artist John Ruskin were born almost 100 years apart, but they shared a similar view of art. They both had an intense lifelong obsession with close observation and finely rendered imagery in artwork. In this exhibition, their works are displayed next to each other for the first time and their different approaches to interpreting nature are examined. The Museum is hosting a Nature Sketching event on May 20, which has been inspired by the artwork of this exhibit.
Copeland Sculpture Garden
The Delaware Art Museum is surrounded by a lush and beautiful natural green setting which features the Copeland Sculpture Garden. Nine different sculptures are on display here, and it’s always worth it to relax outside of the museum and take in the beauty of these structures and nature. Notable sculptures found here include:
- Crying Giant by Tom Otterness
- Three Rectangles Horizontal Jointed Gyratory III
- A sound sculpture by Joe Moss
British Pre-Raphaelites
The British Pre-Raphaelites ignored artistic conventions of their era and instead focused on the aesthetics of past eras, with special attention paid to the Middle Ages. This exhibition is considered one of the best Pre-Raphaelite collections in the United States and is the largest collection of its kind outside of the United Kingdom. It primarily includes artwork of subjects drawn from literature, the Bible, Shakespeare, Arthurian legend, and more. Media found here includes paintings, drawings, decorative arts, and illustrated books.
