The heart of any museum is its collection—the works of art it holds in trust for
the public. Here at the Art Museum of West Virginia University, our collection
beats with more than 4,000 paintings, prints, drawings, photography, sculpture,
and ceramics.
With a focus on art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the museum’s collection
also has the depth to contextualize the art of the recent past and the present,
allowing you to “see” the conversations in art that have taken place across continents
and centuries. Ritual objects from Africa and Asia are put into dialogue with twentieth-century
sculpture. Works of art on paper—prints, watercolors, drawings, and photographs—tell
stories from Rembrandt’s time to Rauschenberg’s. Contemporary art is illuminated
by nineteenth-century American landscape painting. And though the history of art
is a global history, it has also been written here in West Virginia, as you can
see in the museum’s collection of artists from the region, such as James Edward
Davis and Blanche Lazzell.
Serving the entire state from WVU’s flagship campus in Morgantown, the Art Museum
is committed not only to bringing the world’s great artistic traditions to you
but also showcasing the talents and practices of artists who have called West Virginia
home.
The Art Museum is a lending institution and collection study center that also licenses
reproductions of works in its collection. For more information on loans and image
rights and reproductions, please contact registrar Karen Louvar at
Karen.Louvar@mail.wvu.edu. You may find more information about research
and classroom visits on our
Visit page.
The Art Museum is prohibited by codes of professional conduct and the Tax Reform
Act of 1984 from appraising or authenticating works of art. If you would like to
have a work appraised, we suggest you contact one of the following organizations:
