The university's museum: from the Bishops Gallery to the Raclin Murphy

1875 – present · the collection's own history

The arc: The university's art collection dates its origin to 1875, when Luigi Gregori's gallery of sixty episcopal portraits opened in the Main Building alongside the Museum of Indian Antiquities. The museum's own published history — the Story of South Bend section of this entry — runs the line unbroken: the large Native American donation of Father Edward W. J. Lindesmith in 1899; the 136 Braschi family paintings acquired from Rome by President John W. Cavanaugh in 1917, hung in Bond Hall's four new second-floor galleries; the 108 religious paintings given by Charles A. Wightman in 1924 in memory of his wife Cecilia, which made the Wightman Memorial Art Gallery, whose first curator and conservator was Dom Gregory Gerrer, O.S.B., a Benedictine who had studied art in Rome, and whose first published catalogue appeared in 1925. The curator line ran on through Paul R. Byrne (1953–58), James Key Reeve, John Howett — whose Handbook of the Collection appeared in 1966 — and, from 1966, Dean Porter, who became director in 1974, the year the gallery won accreditation from the American Association of Museums. The 1952–53 building of O'Shaughnessy Hall, Ignatius A. O'Shaughnessy's gift at Father Hesburgh's request, gave the collection its O'Shaughnessy Art Gallery, and Father Lauck's directorship from 1962 professionalized it.

The Snite: In December 1976 Frederick B. Snite Sr. gave two million dollars for a museum building, fresh from selling his Chicago loan business to Mellon. The Snite Museum of Art opened in November 1980: seventy thousand square feet by the architect Ambrose Richardson, built as a three-story core with the converted Meštrović Studio on one side and the O'Shaughnessy Galleries on the other, and named for Frederick B. Snite Jr., class of 1933, who had died in 1954. The collection it housed then numbered more than 25,000 works. The Charles B. Hayes Family Sculpture Park, laid out in the fall of 2012 at the museum's edge, closed during the Campus Crossroads building campaign and reopened in August 2017; endowed and dedicated in 2018, it shows about a dozen sculptures in a landscaped setting.

The Raclin Murphy Museum of Art: In December 2017 the university announced lead gifts from Ernestine Raclin and her daughter and son-in-law, Carmen and Christopher Murphy, for a new museum. Robert A. M. Stern Architects was chosen in 2019; construction began in April 2020; and the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art opened to the public on December 1, 2023, at the corner of Eddy Street and Angela Boulevard, anchoring the campus arts district. Its first phase is again seventy thousand square feet: twenty-three historically themed galleries around a skylit atrium, a chapel dedicated to Our Lady, Queen of Families, and Ivan's Café, named for Meštrović. The collection now exceeds 30,000 objects, among the largest of any American academic museum, and its named holdings run from the Feddersen Collection of Rembrandt etchings and the Reilly Collection of Old Master drawings to the Butkin Collection of nineteenth-century French art, the Scholz Collection of nineteenth-century photographs, the Ashbaugh Collection of Meštrović sculpture and drawings, and the George Rickey Sculpture Archive, with one of the nation's finest collections of Olmec and Mesoamerican art. The collection marks its sesquicentennial — 1875 to 2025 — in its 150th year. The Snite building closed in April 2023 and reopened as the Snite Research Center in the Visual Arts, housing collection care, curatorial and administrative offices.

Sources:

1. Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, "How We Started" and "Collection" pages (raclinmurphymuseum.nd.edu) — the full institutional line from the 1875 Bishops Gallery through the Wightman Gallery and its curators, the Snite gift, building and 1980 opening, the Hayes Sculpture Park, the Raclin gifts of 2017, and the new museum's 2023 public opening, named collections and 30,000-object count.
2. University of Notre Dame, "Raclin Murphy Museum of Art" and "Charles B. Hayes Family Sculpture Park" (raclinmurphymuseum.nd.edu/explore) — the December 1, 2023 public opening, the seventy thousand square feet, twenty-three galleries, the atrium and the Queen of Families chapel.
3. Notre Dame News, "New Raclin Murphy Museum of Art on Notre Dame's campus will open Dec. 1" (2023) — the opening date, the Ernestine Raclin and Carmen and Christopher Murphy gifts, the construction start of April 2020, and the Snite building's conversion into the Snite Research Center in the Visual Arts.