Our collection galleries are continually being installed with newly acquired works as well as enduring favorites from the Museum’s collection. Visit us to view these newly installed objects in person.
Admission is always free.
Gallery 131
This floating, crystal-encrusted branch has a fairytale-like magic. Dutch designer Tord Boontje (born 1968) took nature as his point of departure for this contemporary chandelier commissioned by Austrian crystal manufacturer Swarovski. The artist’s childhood memory of a flowering tree frozen by an untimely ice storm inspired Night Blossom Chandelier‘s craggy form, which is made luminous by tiny blue LED lights.
Tord Boontje, Dutch, born 1968; made by Swarovski, Tyrol, Austria, founded 1892; Night Blossom Chandelier, 2003; glass, LED lights, and lacquered steel; 40 1/2 x 57 1/2 x 14 1/2 inches; Saint Louis Art Museum, Funds given by Emily Rauh Pulitzer in honor of Cara McCarty 1:2006; © Tord Boontje, Design for Swarovski
Gallery 248
Across North America, museums are working with Native American and First Nations communities to expand the stories they tell about Native American art. To help engage a chorus of voices at the Saint Louis Art Museum, we work closely with artists of Indigenous heritage.
In the fourth collaborative project in a series featuring a contemporary Native artist, Edgar Heap of Birds installed 16 pairs of moccasins from the Museum’s collection in Gallery 322.
Native Artist Collaboration: Edgar Heap of Birds (installation view)
Gallery 205
Newly installed in the Museum’s Romanticism gallery is Sunburst in the Riesengebirge, a recently acquired landscape painting by the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840). While the painting may be unassuming in scale, it is yet rich in the allegorical imagery that characterizes much of the artist’s work. Friedrich was the leading German painter of the first half of the 19th century and one of the leading figures of European Romanticism.
Caspar David Friedrich, German, 1774–1840; Sunburst in the Riesengebirge, 1835; oil on canvas; 10 x 12 1/2 inches; Saint Louis Art Museum, Friends Fund, Museum Purchase, Director's Discretionary Fund, and the Ann Goddard Trust 1:2019
Gallery 206
Renowned for her perceptive and meticulously detailed depictions of animals, French artist Rosa Bonheur became one of the most admired painters in Europe in the mid-19th century. Bonheur’s 1887 painting Relay Hunting was recently installed in the Museum’s Realism gallery, which displays work representative of a mid-19th-century shift away from historical, mythological, and religious paintings toward the truthful depiction of everyday, contemporary subject matter that appealed to Europe’s expanding middle classes.
Rosa Bonheur, French, 1822–1899; Relay Hunting, 1887; oil on canvas; Saint Louis Art Museum, Gift of Justina G. Catlin in memory of her husband, Daniel Catlin 7:1917
Gallery 339
A surprising multiplicity of sources is brought into harmony in this beautiful, salmon-colored terracotta sculpture by American artist John Storrs (1885–1956). The choice of subject, a mother and child, evolved from the artist’s emotional experience of the death of his mother and birth of his only child. Its visual language, however, is starkly modernist.
John Storrs, American, 1885–1956; Modern Madonna, c.1918–19; terracotta with traces of paint; 23 7/16 x 7 3/4 x 5 1/8 inches; Saint Louis Art Museum, Museum Shop Fund 86:1985 © Estate of John Storrs
Gallery 209
A recent gift to the Museum from the Estate of Mary and Oliver Langenberg, Pink Roses in a Glass Vase is on view in Gallery 209, which is devoted to modern still lifes. The painting is displayed alongside early 20th-century still lifes by Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Max Beckmann, and others.
Samuel John Peploe, Scottish, 1871–1935; Pink Roses in a Glass Vase, late 1920s; oil on canvas; 28 1/2 × 24 5/8 × 3 5/8 inches; Saint Louis Art Museum, Gift from the Estate of Mary and Oliver Langenberg 1:2018
Gallery 212
The Museum recently installed Tamayo’s painting The Dog and Serpent, 1943, and Mérida’s The Three Princesses, 1955, in Gallery 212. Titled Art of the Unconscious, this gallery examines the influence of developing ideas of psychoanalysis on European and American art, particularly Surrealism.
Rufino Tamayo, Mexican, 1899–1991; The Dog and Serpent, 1943; oil on canvas; 34 1/8 x 44 1/4 inches; Saint Louis Art Museum, Gift of Morton D. May 234:1954; © 2018 Tamayo Heirs / Mexico / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
Carlos Mérida, Guatemalan (active Mexico), 1891–1985; The Three Princesses, 1955; lacquer, casein on parchment, laid down on laminated wood; 16 1/8 x 12 5/8 inches; Saint Louis Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Pulitzer Jr. 167:1959; © Estate of Carlos Merida / Licensed by ARS, New York, NY