The Greenville County Museum of Art + its renowned Wyeth collection feel like they’ve been part of the city from the start, but it’s actually been less than 100 years since the museum went from idea to reality (and it was a pretty long journey).
🕰️ Let’s take it back to 1935: The Greenville Fine Arts League was created by three local artists + collectors. The group grew to a community of 22 artists keeping creativity alive during the Depression era (later it would be renamed the Fine Arts League of the Carolinas.)
1945: The Greenville Arts Association was formed + immediately made plans to ask the City of Greenville to help fund the purchase of a building for an art museum. (In 1953, the Fine Arts League joined forces with the GAA + became its Creative Artists Committee.)
1958: The City made it happen – the Greenville Arts Association purchased the Gassaway mansion for $68,000 (and paid off their debt within a year). 🙌
1962: Maintaining the museum was kinda expensive, so the GAA asked the City for public management + public funding. In 1963, the Greenville County Museum Commission was formed by the S.C. General Assembly. The Commission decided to make the museum 100% free through Greenville tax money + the County agreed to fund operations. Programs would be (+ are) funded by private sources.
1972: To score larger acquisitions, host traveling exhibits + better protect the art, the Greenville Arts Association realized it needed a new location. That year, ground was broken at Heritage Green – thanks to a $750,000 donation by textile mill owner Arthur Magill and his wife Holly + matched by the County of Greenville.
March 9, 1974: The 70,000 sq. ft. Greenville County Museum of Art had its opening night. ✨
1979: The Magills loaned 26 Wyeth paintings + 230 Wyeth drawings to the GCMA, shaking up the art world when a little-known S.C. museum became the owner of the greatest number of Wyeth works outside the artist’s own collection.
1983: Thomas W. Styron became the museum’s director (and is still there today) + focused on building the GCMA’s Southern art collection – a book was published in 1995 that features works from the collection and essays on their significance.
1985: The Greenville Arts Association became The Museum Association, Inc., creating the museum’s official board of directors.
1989: The Magills decided to sell their Wyeth collection, meaning it would leave the museum. But the GCMA’s reputation as quality caretakers of major arts collections like the Wyeth works had already been established. 💁
1990: Shortly after selling the Wyeth collection, the Magills donated $6 million (the largest single donor gift to an arts agency in state history at the time 👏). Thanks to public + private support, the GCMA was able to begin building its own Wyeth collection and attracting other exhibits to the museum.
Today: The Greenville County Museum of Art has shown exhibits by Norman Rockwell, Chuck Close + Jasper Johns. It’s the only museum in the Upstate with an accreditation from the American Alliance of Museums, and it has the largest public collection of Wyeth watercolors in the world. Not to mention the greatest number of William H. Johnson works outside the Smithsonian + the world’s ten best public Jasper Johns collections.
The GCMA has acquired $62 million worth of art in the past 25 years thanks to private + corporate donors. The Wyeth collection is a hallmark of the museum, and its 2017 exhibit Wyeth Dynasty featured work by three Wyeth generations while My Andy (a photography show by his only grandchild Victoria) gave intimate insight into the artist’s later life.
As much as the GCMA has set itself apart, there’s always room to grow. 🌱 The Columbia Museum of Art boats a Monet painting + extravagant Dale Chihuly sculpture (the artist behind that pink sculpture near Velo Fellow). In Charlotte, the Mint Museum hosts exhibits from fashion to contemporary Mexican photography and the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art has a broad European collection. The Asheville Art museum features a large collection of (suuuuper calming) Josef Albers work.
But maybe the GCMA’s focus on its Southern Collection is what makes it unique: you can road trip to Columbia to see some ancient work, but at the GCMA you get a look into the art of home.
