JMTravels: Dayton Art Institute

The Dayton Art Institute is located in Dayton, Ohio. I really liked this art museum because it has a great, interesting collection, but is also laid back and they don't have security guards everywhere, which annoys me.

The museum was originally founded in 1919 and was inside a mansion in downtown Dayton.

It later moved in 1930 to this building across the Miami River from downtown Dayton. The design is based off of the Casino in the gardens of the Villa Farnese in Caprarola, Italy

In the modern/contemporary art exhibit, they have Roy Lichtenstein's Homage to Painting

It is supposed to be a parody of thick brushstrokes of Abstract Impressionist artists, Lichtenstein always said he wanted his art to look programmed, not handmade.

There is also a work of Andy Warhol, one of my favorite modern artists.

This is a portrait of Russell Means, an Oglala Sioux who led the occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota in 1973. Warhol often used famous people as the subject of his pop art.

This one is called High Noon by Edward Hopper, it is a place in "Hopperland", which was his own imaginary land, but really it represents the isolation and loneliness in much of America during the first half of the 20th century.

The exhibit continued to American art, in which most of my pictures are blurry and I didn't take any pictures of the captions. This painting could be by Thomas Cole or a Hudson River School painter, but I'm unsure.

A lobby with marble columns connects the American art wing with the European art wing.

The European exhibit does not really have any Impressionist works, which are my favorite, but they do own a Monet, but it was in a traveling exhibit when I visited.

The painting on the right is by Peter Paul Rubens, and is a portrait of Daniel Nijs, a wealthy builder and collector who lived in Venice and was friends with Rubens.