History of Harvard Art Museums (Timeline)

 1891

 Gift given by Mrs. Elizabeth Fogg in memory of her deceased husband to build an art museum in his name.

 

1895

Opening of the Fogg Museum as a teaching facility for art scholars, curators and museum professionals. 

 

1897 

Professors George Bartlett, Kuno Francke, and Hugo K. Schilling publish the pamphlet, “The Need of a Germanic Museum at Harvard.”


1901

November 10—the birthday of Martin Luther and Friedrich Schiller—marks the dedication of the Germanic Museum in Rogers Gymnasium (pictured). Kuno Francke is named curator. At the time of the dedication, the Germanic Museum was the only museum in North America to be dedicated to the arts of Central and Northern Europe.

 

1910

Adolphus Busch donates $265,000 for the construction of a new building. A design is commissioned from German Bestelmeyer of Dresden, who also built the Reichsschulden-verwaltung building, Berlin (1921–23) and was a proponent of Nazi architecture.


1921

After delays due to World War I, the museum finally moved to another site, the Adolphus Busch Hall. Fifty thousand visitors come the first year. 

 

1927 

The museum moves from its original location on the northern edge of the Harvard Yard to its present location at 32 Quincy Street.

 

1928

Edward Forbes starts the first fine arts conservation, research, and training facility in the United States at the Fogg Museum.


1942

As the US enters WWII, the museum is closed indefinitely. The art collection and library are moved into storage at the Fogg, while the building is used as a staff headquarters for the US Army Chaplain school. Organ recitals performed in the hall by E. Power Biggs were broadcasted nationally on CBS Radio until 1958. The organ, which was designed by Flentrop of Zaandam, Holland, is designed to produce the pure and clear tone of the baroque organs that Bach used. 


1943 

Harvard University acquires more than 4000 works of the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection

 

1950 

The museum is renamed Busch-Reisinger Museum, after Busch and his son-in-law Hugo Reisinger, who contributed significantly to the building of the Adolphus Busch hall. 

 

1962

 The Harvard Fine Arts Library is established through a merger of the Fogg and Busch-Reisinger Museum library collections.

 

1965 

In an effort to consolidate and articulate the collections of both the Fogg and Busch-Reisinger Museums, early Flemish, Dutch, and German paintings and sculpture are transferred to the Busch-Reisinger Museum, and Central and Northern European prints are transferred to the Fogg. 


1977

 Decision to open a museum dedicated to arts from the Ancient Mediterranean, the Middle East and Asia already present in the Harvard collection, thanks to the generosity of philanthropist Arthur M. Sackler. 

 

1985

Opening of the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, which still houses collections from the aforementioned areas as well as the History of Art and Architecture Department and the Media Slide Library.

 

1991

The museum is moved to yet another site, the Werner Otto Hall. 

 

1995 

The Sackler Museum acquired—by purchase and gift—77 Rajasthani paintings from one of the finest collections of such artefacts in the world, that of recently retired curator of Islamic and Later Indian Art Stuart Cary Welch. 

 

2008 

The Harvard Art Museums close for renovation

  

2014

The Harvard Art Museums reopens 

  

2019

 Protesters call for the removal of the Arthur M. Sackler name from the museum because of the Sackler's historical role in the opioid epidemic.


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