Birmingham Museum of Art. Founded in 1951, the Birmingham Museum of Art in Birmingham, Alabama, today has one of the finest collections in the Southeastern United States, with more than 24,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, and decorative arts representing a numerous diverse cultures, including Asian, European, American, African, Pre-Columbian, and Native American. Among other highlights, the Museum's collection of Asian art is considered the finest and most comprehensive in the Southeast, and its Vietnamese ceramics one of the finest in the U.S. The Museum also is home to a remarkable Kress Collection of Renaissance and Baroque paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts from the late 13th century to c.1750, and the 18th-century European decorative arts include superior examples of English ceramics and French furniture. The Birmingham Museum of Art is owned by the City of Birmingham and encompasses 3.9 acres in the heart of the city's cultural district. Erected in 1959, the present building was designed by architects Warren, Knight and Davis, and a major renovation and expansion by Edward Larrabee Barnes of New York was completed in 1993. The facility encompasses 180,000 square feet, including an outdoor sculpture garden. The Museum's growing collection of nearly 2,000 objects is derived from the major culture groups of sub-Saharan Africa and dates from the 12th century to the present. The collection features fine examples of figure sculpture, masks, ritual objects, furniture and household and utilitarian objects, textiles, ceramics and metal arts, with an Egyptian false door, Yoruba mask, Benin bronze hip pendant, and a divination portrait of a king from Dahomey. Spanning the late 18th through mid-20th century, the Museum's collection of American painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts features paintings by Gilbert Stuart, Childe Hassam, and Georgia O'Keeffe; sculptures by Hiram Powers and Frederic Remington; and important decorative pieces by Tiffany Studios and Frank Lloyd Wright. Considered one of the three most important American landscape paintings, the Museum's Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California by Bierstadt was recently chosen by The National Endowment for the Humanities as one of 40 American masterpieces that best depict the people, places, and events that have shaped our country and tell America's story. Since its doors opened to the public in 1951, the Birmingham Museum of Art has collected and exhibited the art of Alabama. Among the earliest works to enter the collection were paintings by significant Alabama artists including the miniaturist Hannah Elliott and the landscapist Carrie Hill. Throughout its history, the Museum has continued its commitment to the arts of Alabama. In 1995, it organized Made in Alabama, a groundbreaking survey of artistic production in the state during the 19th century. In addition to collecting the works of academically trained native artists, the Museum has built an impressive collection of folk art, including painting, sculpture, quilts, and pottery. Thanks to the generosity of Robert and Helen Cargo, the Museum possesses one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of Southern quilts in the country. Similarly, several major private collectors are helping the Museum build the most significant repository of Alabama pottery in the State. The Museum's Asian art collection started with a gift of Chinese textiles in 1951 and today, with more than 4,000 objects, is the largest and most comprehensive in the Southeast. The collection hails from China, Korea, Japan, India, and Southeast Asia, featuring the finest collection of Vietnamese ceramics in the U.S., as well as outstanding examples of Buddhist and Hindu art, lacquer ware, ceramics, paintings, prints, and sculpture. Highlights include a rare Ming dynasty temple wall and Tang dynasty tomb figures from China; Jomon period pottery from Japan; and contemporary works such as The Grand Residence, considered by Chinese painter Wu Guanzhong among his most important works. Also, on long-term loan from The Smithsonian Institution is the Vetlesen Jade Collection of 16th-to 19th-century pieces, one of the most important jade collections in the U.S. The Museum has the only gallery for Korean art in the Southeast.