Coming home

After a three-year hiatus spent on the booming Wilmington riverfront, the Delaware Art Museum is in a new home at its old address at 2301 Kentmere Parkway. The mega expansion and renovation adds a major art venue in the Delaware Valley, reopening to the public June 26.

It is no longer a hobby indulged in by the Delaware wealthy, but an impressive center for display, education and research. In addition, its permanent collection of pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood art and its new Sloan Library make it a standout with little or no competition in those areas.

Much of the credit for this major leap forward should go to retiring museum Director Steve Bruni. Under his tenure, the museum began the expansion, courted a major donor, Helen Farr Sloan – the late John Sloan’s wife – and bought "the chairs." It was the chairs as much as anything else that signaled the museum was looking to become a major-league player. The two chairs built and decorated by William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti came to symbolize the entire Arts and Crafts Movement, a much-loved stepson of the Brotherhood. The chairs clearly had a place in the museum as an addition to the Bancroft donation of the pre-Raphaelite collection; Delaware itself has a long and rich tradition of arts and crafts communities.

Bruni and a museum trustee were sent to London with cash to make the deal. They lacked deep pockets, but had a bold and well-thought-out plan plus a bit of inside knowledge. The idea was to spend all their money, if necessary, on a single chair of the pair so as to come home with at least one. They also knew that British museums have the right to step in and simply match the price if art is about to be shipped out of the country.

What the British establishment did not know, including the august Victoria and Albert decorative-arts museum, is that the chairs already were in the possession of foreigners and in fact had been sent back from the Midwestern United States for the auction. The Delaware bid on the first chair carried the day and, by committing everything they had left, the two chairs came to the First State.

Now with 100,000 square feet, up from 60,000 square feet, the virtually new museum has a new look and a new director. Filling Bruni’s 30-year shoes will be Danielle Rice, former head of education at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, a position she also held with the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Conn. A museum professional with more than 25 years experience, Rice has a doctorate from Yale and a bachelors of arts from Wellesley College.

The inaugural exhibition is fittingly enough from the museum’s permanent collection of more than 12,000 items. The show, which runs June 26-Oct. 2, is "Consuming Desires: Turn of the Century Posters and the Rise of Modern Marketing." The exhibition features posters from 1890 to 1914 and includes works from both sides of the Atlantic. The works became popular after French artist Jules Cheret pioneered this format and soon posters were promoting all sorts of goods and services.

As part of the mixture, posters were meant to attract attention and so the works utilize large areas of flat color, such as Japanese prints, and the style caught on. Even the term "poster girl" came from this era and, then as now, sex was used to sell. The appeal was universal and the show features works from France, Belgium, Germany and England, as well at the United States.

Other new installations include Violet Oakley’s The Tempest and Hamlet stained-glass windows; "American Vision 1757-1915," featuring the museum’s collection of 19th century American art; "A Treasure Chest of American Illustration," featuring the illustrations of Howard Pyle; "John Sloan: People and Places," with Sloan’s work from New York and Santa Fe; and "Early American Modernism" with paintings from the Ashcan School.

For those who seek a more comprehensive museum experience than art can provide, the Delaware Art Museum has left no stone unturned. There are indoor and outdoor caf�s, a library, theater, store, sculpture garden, reception areas, public spaces and classrooms.

Delaware Art Museum
2301 Kentmere Parkway
Wilmington, Del.
302-571-9590
www.delart.org
Adults, $10; seniors, $8; students with valid ID, $5; youths, $3; children 6 and under, free; admission free Sundays