Mead Art Museum, Art museum at Amherst College, US
The Mead Art Museum is an art museum on the Amherst College campus in western Massachusetts, home to a collection spanning American paintings, European works, Russian art, Mexican ceramics, and Tibetan scroll paintings. A dedicated gallery also displays massive carved stone panels from ancient Assyria, making the range of the collection particularly wide.
The museum was established in the early 20th century as Amherst College built up an art collection intended for teaching and study. The Assyrian stone reliefs already arrived on campus in the 1850s, well before the museum itself was formally founded, making them among the oldest objects in the collection.
The museum contains a complete English room from the 1600s, with carved oak and walnut wall panels taken from a manor house and reinstalled here. Visitors can walk into the space and get a direct sense of how a wealthy household in England once looked and felt.
The museum is free to enter and sits at the center of the Amherst College campus, making it easy to reach on foot from the main college buildings. Visiting during the academic year means a better chance of catching an exhibition opening or a student-led tour of the galleries.
The Assyrian stone panels on display came from the palace of King Ashurnasirpal II and were shipped across the Atlantic in the 1850s, a remarkable feat given that each block weighs several tons. They arrived at Amherst before most American museums even existed, making this one of the earliest Assyrian collections in the country.
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