Addison Gallery. The Addison Gallery of American Art, as a department of Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, is an academic museum dedicated to collecting American art. The museum's purpose is to acquire, preserve, interpret, and exhibit works of art for the education and enjoyment of local, regional, national and international audiences, including the students, faculty, and community of Phillips Academy, and other students, teachers, scholars and the general public. Phillips Academy alumnus Thomas Cochran created the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy in 1931 as the most extraordinary of his many gifts to the school. Guided by Cochran's goal to enrich permanently the lives of the students, the Addison's programs demonstrate a central concern for education. The museum is a teaching resource for Phillips Academy students and faculty as well as an art center for the greater Boston area and the nation at large. By the Terms of Trust under which the Addison Gallery was founded, the museum's collection is limited to works of art or craftsmanship produced by native-born or naturalized citizens of the United States, with the following exceptions: photographs and books by other than native-born or naturalized citizens; portraits or busts of Americans and portrayals of American scenes or vessels by artists of foreign birth produced not later than 1800; pieces of pottery or glassware of whatever origin or date decorated with American scenes; and scale models of famous ships connected with the history of the United States. Directors of the gallery include Bartlett Hayes, Christopher Cook, Jock Reynolds, Adam Weinberg, Brian Allen, Judith F. Dolkart. The Addison Gallery of American Art's founding collection included major works by such prominent American artists as John Singleton Copley, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, Maurice Prendergast, John Singer Sargent, John Twachtman, and James McNeill Whistler. Aggressive purchasing and generous gifts have added works by such artists as George Bellows, Alexander Calder, Stuart Davis, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Hans Hofmann, Edward Hopper, Knox Martin, Georgia O'Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, Frederic Remington, Charles Sheeler, Frank Stella, John Sloan, Benjamin West and Andrew Wyeth. It also has paintings by John Kensett, Frederic Church, George Inness, Dwight Tryon, Ralph Blakelock, John Singer Sargent, Josef Albers, Mary Cassatt, and Phillip Guston. The Addison's collection of 7,500 photographs spans the history of American photography and includes in-depth holdings of key individual artists, such as Lewis Baltz, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Eadweard Muybridge, Carleton Watkins, Margaret Bourke-White, and Ansel Adams. In recent years, the Gallery has acquired significant contemporary works by Emery Bopp, Carroll Dunham, Kerry James Marshall, Joel Shapiro, and Lorna Simpson, to name a few. Today, the collection comprises over 17,500 works in all media, including painting, sculpture, photography, drawings, prints, and decorative arts from the eighteenth century to the present. It also has a collection of models of American ships, including the Half Moon, Mayflower, and Yacht America. A rotating schedule of exhibitions is open to students and the public alike. The Addison's core programs include: caring for and expanding a permanent collection of American art of the highest quality; producing an ambitious publication and changing exhibition program of twelve to eighteen exhibits each year; offering diverse education and community outreach programs free of charge; and supporting and encouraging living artists through a residency program. The Addison Gallery has long served as a proving ground for new approaches to learning about art and as a national model for arts education. The Addison strives to be a place where students can learn about art, work with visiting artists and visit diverse exhibitions, all ongoing programs that reflect the museum's central focus on education. The Addison's education outreach program combines the experience of art with its practice; provides direct contact with working artists and presents the arts as a collective expression of culture. Tours, classroom instruction, gallery talks, lectures, teacher workshops, and a film series are offered to area public schools and the general public. More than 6,000 students participate in the education outreach program annually. The Addison's association with Phillips Academy enables the collection to serve as a laboratory for teaching within the school, not only for studio and art history, but also for history, English, philosophy, and other disciplines.
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