Peabody Essex Museum. The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, is a successor to the East India Marine Society, established in 1799. It combines the collections of the former Peabody Museum of Salem and the Essex Institute. PEM is the oldest continuously operating museum in the United States and holds one of the major collections of Asian art in the United States. Its total holdings include about 1.3 million pieces, as well as twenty-two historic buildings. The Peabody Essex ranks among the top 20 art museums in the United States by measures including gallery space and endowment. Once the Advancement Campaign is complete and the newly expanded museum opens in 2019, PEM will rank in the top 10 North American art museums in terms of gallery square footage, operating budget and endowment. The PEM holds more than 840,000 works of historical and cultural art covering maritime, American, Asian, Oceanic and African art, Asian export art and two large libraries with over 400,000 books and manuscripts. In 1992, the Peabody Museum of Salem merged with the Essex Institute to form the Peabody Essex Museum. Included in the merger was the legacy of the East India Marine Society, established in 1799 by a group of Salem-based captains and supercargoes. Members of the Society were required by the society's charter to collect natural and artificial curiosities from beyond the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn. They were also required to personally circumnavigate the globe, and share navigational discoveries with other Society members, thereby increasing their chances of returning from their voyages safely. Due to the institution's age, the items they donated to the collections are significant for their rare combination of age and provenance. The East India Marine Society built East India Marine Hall, a National Historic Landmark now embedded in the museum's facilities, in the 1820s to house its collection. This collection was acquired by the Peabody Academy of Science in 1867, along with the building, which continued to serve as a museum space through these mergers and acquisitions. In 2003, the museum completed a massive $100 million renovation and expansion resulting in the Peabody Essex Museum opening a new wing designed by Moshe Safdie, more than doubling the gallery space to 250,000 square feet; this allowed the display of many items from its extensive holdings, which had previously been unknown to the public due to lack of capability to show them. At this time, the museum also opened to the public the Yin Yu Tang House, an early 19th-century Chinese house from Anhui Province that had been disassembled in its original village and reconstructed in Salem. In 2011, the Peabody Essex Museum announced it had raised $550 million, with plans to raise an additional $100 million by 2016. The Boston Globe reported this was the largest capital campaign in the museum's history, vaulting the Peabody Essex into the top tier of major art museums. The PEM trustee co-chairs Sam Byrne and Sean Healey with board president Robert Shapiro led the campaign.$200 to $250 million will fund the museum's 175,000-square-foot expansion bringing the total square footage to 425,000 square feet. In May 2012, the PEM confirmed that its expansion will not be finished until 2019, due to the unexpected death of museum architect Rick Mather in April 2012 and the search for his replacement.To replace architect Rick Mather, the firm of Ennead Architects was chosen after successfully completing the first phase of the building project, which included master planning and the renovation of the museum's Dodge wing, scheduled to open in November 2013. On September 28, 2019 the museum opened a new 40,000-square-foot wing, designed by Ennead Architects of New York, adjacent to East India Marine Hall. This addition included 15,000 square feet of Class A galleries as well as a 5,000-square-foot-garden designed by Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects. The museum was led by Dan Monroe, the Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Director and CEO from 1993 until his retirement in 2019. He was succeeded on July 15, 2019 by Brian Kennedy, who previously directed the Toledo Museum of Art. Kennedy has served as assistant director of the National Gallery of Ireland, director of the National Gallery of Australia, and director of the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College. Kennedy has an abiding interest in perception and visual literacy and is deeply committed to arts education.
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