The Dahesh Museum

“The Dahesh Museum of Art is the only museum in America dedicated to collecting and exhibiting 19th- and early 20th-century European academic art, which is the continuation of the great Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo traditions in the visual arts. The Museum is a leader in rediscovering the rich art and history of the French Academy, the British Royal Academy and other centers of artist tradition throughout the Western world

“The basis of the Museum is an extensive art collection acquired by the writer and philosopher Dr. Dahesh (1909-1984), who lived in Beirut, Lebanon. Dr. Dahesh envisioned a museum of European academic art in Beirut but in 1975, when Lebanon’s civil war put the collection at risk, it was brought to the United States. The Museum was chartered in 1987 and opened to the public in January 1995. In June 2000 the New York State Board of Regents approved the Dahesh Museum’s petition to change its name to the Dahesh Museum of Art, more clearly identifying the Museum’s artistic mission.

“Since opening in 1995, the collection has grown dramatically through gift and purchase, and the Museum has developed an active exhibition program, exploring themes germane to 19th-century academic art. Publications, special programs and educational activities for adults and children enrich and extend all exhibitions. The Museum is now an internationally known center for the study of academic art”
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“Orientalism, scenes of of North Africa and the Middle East (the subject of two Dahesh Museum of Art exhibitions), was a phenomenon that captured the imagination of artists and patrons to an extraordinary degree, and the Dahesh Museum of Art collection is outstanding. Artists in every European country participated, including England’s Edwin Long, with his imaginative recreation of everyday life in ancient Egypt, Love’s Labour Lost, and the Austrian Rudolf Ernst, with his study of the contemporary Arab world, The Metalworkers. The French were key participants in every medium, including sculpture, of which Charles Henri Joseph Cordier’s A Sudanese in Algerian Costume is an elegant example. The Dahesh Museum of Art has also recently added to its permanent collection the German painter Gustav Bauernfeind’s masterpiece, Jaffa, Recruiting of Turkish Soldiers in Palestine.”