Gibbes Museum of Art, Art museum in Charleston, United States

The Gibbes Museum of Art is an arts center in Charleston housed in a Beaux Arts building that occupies three floors with more than 10,000 works and rotating exhibitions. The structure takes up a key position on Meeting Street and serves as a major venue for presenting both historical and contemporary art.

The Carolina Art Association, founded in 1858, received $100,000 from James Shoolbred Gibbes for a building to exhibit paintings; after a will contest, the New York Supreme Court upheld the gift on December 6, 1901. Contractor H.T. Zacharias began work in September 1903 on the site of the former South Carolina Agricultural Hall, and the museum opened on April 11, 1905. It closed for a two-year, $13.5 million renovation and reopened on May 28, 2016.

The collection centres on artists tied to Charleston and the South, among them miniaturist Henrietta Johnston, portraitist Jeremiah Theus and Charles Fraser. It also holds photographs by George LaGrange Cook, including images taken after the 1886 Charleston earthquake. The opening display in 1905 comprised over 300 pictures, many bronzes and about 200 miniatures.

The first floor with classrooms, artist studios, and the museum shop is free to enter, while the main galleries upstairs require paid admission. It is best to allow several hours to explore the exhibitions at a comfortable pace.

The 1905 building was designed by Frank Pierce Milburn with a Tiffany-style dome, Doric columns and pediment-capped windows and doors. Renovators reopened it in 2016 using the original blueprints, rediscovered in the City of Charleston archives in 2008, to restore the 1905 Beaux Arts layout.