April 8, 1951

On April 8, 1951, the Birmingham Museum of Art opened with five galleries featuring 75 paintings borrowed from major museums across the U.S. It originally had no permanent collection other than a few inaugural gifts of paintings, textiles and glass. In 1952, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation loaned and later agreed to donate 27 Renaissance and Baroque paintings if they could be properly housed. In response, Helen Jacobs Wells, widow of banking executive Samuel Wells, stipulated in her will that upon her death (in December 1954), the bulk of her sizable estate would go to construct a building that would provide the proper display, temperature and humidity requirements for paintings and other works of art. Wells also bequeathed her print collection, which included masterworks by Rembrandt, Albrecht Dürer and James McNeill Whistler, to the facility. Named for her husband, who also was an avid supporter of the arts, the Oscar Wells Memorial Museum building opened in May 1959.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Steelworker, a statue by sculptor Eddie Luis Jimenez, is located in the sculpture garden of the Birmingham Museum of Art in downtown Birmingham. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of The George F. Landegger Collection of Alabama Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California by Albert Bierstadt, 1865. Gift of the Birmingham Public Library. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, photo courtesy of the Birmingham Museum of Art)

Nymphs and Fauns by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Before 1870. Collection of the Art Fund Inc. at the Birmingham Museum of Art. Purchased with funds provided by C. Caldwell Marks in memory of Jeanne V. Marks. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, photo courtesy of the Birmingham Museum of Art)

Queen of Women Mask (Eze Nwanyi) by the Northeastern Igbo people, late 19th to early 20th century. Museum purchase with funds given in memory of Mrs. Dorothy Steiner. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, photo courtesy of the Birmingham Museum of Art)

Gravity’s Rainbow, 2001, by Odili Donald Odita. Museum purchase in memory of Iain MacPherson Alexander by docents, friend of the Collectors Circle for Contemporary Art, and Margaret, Brenden and Bruce Alexander, 2002. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, photo courtesy of the Birmingham Museum of Art)

Britannia Triumphant, Wedgwood, England, (est. 1759). Model attributed to John Flaxman Jr., England, (1755-1826), 1798/1809. The Dwight and Lucille Beeson Wedgwood Collection. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, photo courtesy of the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Dwight and Lucille Beeson Wedgwood Collection)

Close-up of a section of totem pole by a Northwest Coast artist exhibited in Native American collection at the Birmingham Museum of Art in Birmingham. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, photo courtesy of Alabama Tourism Department)

A wooden and bronze statue of an ibis from the Late Period of Egypt. (Sean Pathasema, Birmingham Museum of Art, Wikipedia)

Profile of a Young Women by Mino da Fiesole, c. 1455-1460. (Sean Pathasema, Birmingham Museum of Art, Wikipedia)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.