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Research

The Museum of Art and Archaeology was founded in 1957 with the purpose of bringing students into close contact with original works of art. With its collection now comprising over 11,000 objects, the Museum is the third largest art museum in Missouri, after the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City and the St. Louis Art Museum.

The collection of ancient art is one of the largest and most important in the central states. The material from post-Roman and medieval Europe, and from non-Western traditions, while smaller in quantity, is of great variety and fine quality. The steadily growing number of Old Master paintings has as its core fourteen works from the Kress Study Collection, given in 1961. The Museum also has a strong collection of prints and drawings dating from the 15th century to the present. Students are encouraged to use the collection in their studies. The Museum publishes Muse, which includes articles about objects in the collection and about University excavations by members of the faculty, students, staff, and scholars from other universities.

In the course of the last forty years, Ellis Library, the main library of the campus, has grown considerably and can rightly claim to be among the best in the country. The open stacks contain over 77,000 volumes and about 750 journals for art history and archaeology, plus additional publications auxiliary to the study of these fields. The Rare Book Room holds among other items a substantial collection of old and rare books on art and architecture from the 16th through the 20th centuries and a collection or works representing Dada and the Surrealist movement in both art and literature.

An important collection of 19th-century plaster casts of Greek, Roman and Renaissance sculpture is also maintained in the Cast Gallery of Pickard Hall.

 

 


The Cast Gallery
circa 1895
© Curators of the University of Missouri
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