Tacoma Art Museum, Art museum in downtown Tacoma, United States.
The Tacoma Art Museum occupies a 50,000-square-foot steel and glass building at 1701 Pacific Avenue, designed by Antoine Predock and opened in 2003. Its central court holds Richard Rhodes's sculpture Untitled - Stone Wave. A 2014 expansion by Olson Kundig added the Haub Family Collection of Western American Art.
The museum grew out of the Tacoma Art League, an informal gathering begun around 1891, renamed the Tacoma Art Society in the 1930s and the Tacoma Art Museum in 1964. In 1971 the L. T. Murray family gave it the 1922 National Bank of Tacoma building at 1123 Pacific Avenue. It moved in May 2003 to Antoine Predock's 50,000-square-foot steel and glass building at 1701 Pacific Avenue, expanded in 2014 by Olson Kundig.
The museum's name traces to the Tacoma Art League, an informal gathering begun around 1891, renamed the Tacoma Art Society in the 1930s and the Tacoma Art Museum in 1964. Its collection is about two-thirds Northwest art, and in 2012 it showed Hide/Seek uncensored after the National Portrait Gallery censored it.
The museum stands at 1701 Pacific Avenue, anchoring downtown Tacoma's museum district near the University of Washington Tacoma campus. The 2003 Antoine Predock building and the 2014 Olson Kundig expansion place the entrance off Pacific Avenue, with the central court holding Richard Rhodes' Untitled - Stone Wave as a landmark for orientation. Galleries occupy two levels connected within the steel and glass structure.
The museum holds the premier public collection of glass artwork by Tacoma-born Dale Chihuly, displayed permanently. Chihuly studied at the Pilchuck Glass School, and the museum also runs a display devoted to the Latham family's glass collection.
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