Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum and Newman Money Museum

Washington University, One Brookings Place
St. Louis, Missouri
Admission is free.  Parking meters for all parking spots.

Website: http://www.kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu/ 

The Kemper Art Museum has four galleries and a museum within the museum!   It is the only museum on the campus of Washington University.  Wash. U. has had an art museum since 1881 but this building was not built until 2006.  It is a vital part of the campus and is definitely a teaching museum.  

Florence Steinberg Weil Sculpture Plaza

On the upper level is the Bernoudy Permanent Collection Gallery. Here one sees about 50-60 of the 6000 pieces that are owned by Washington University. 

Here you will see a mixture of styles.  This well-known painting by Missourian George Caleb Bingham is titled Daniel Boone Escorting Settlers through the Cumberland Gap. 

This 1882 painting by French artist Julien Dupré is called Haying Scene.

There are also many more-contemporary paintings such as L’oeil du silence by the German born Surrealist painter Max Ernst.

Although the vast majority of the pieces are paintings there are a few other items on display.

In the middle of the Permanent Collection Gallery is the Teaching Gallery which basically every semester has on display museum-owned pieces curated by a professor to coordinate with a class being taught.  The current exhibit is called Abodes of Plenty: American Art of the Inhabited Landscape. 

This small gallery/exhibit currently includes Aqueduct Neat Rome by Thomas Cole. 

The two main-floor galleries, the Barney A. Ebsworth Gallery and the Garen Gallery, hold special exhibitions.  What drew us to this museum at this time was the Garen Gallery exhibit The Paintings of Sir Winston Churchill, which is near the end of its three-month display.  

About a week before our planned museum trip we contacted the education department to inquire about a free docent-led tour of the Winston Churchill exhibit.  We were very fortunate that a tour guide agreed to give us a 60-minute tour of the exhibit, as normally tours are only scheduled for groups of 10 or more. She was excellent so not surprisingly the tour group swelled to 14 as other museum visitors came into the gallery and joined us.  Winston Churchill painted about 600 paintings and this exhibit included 45 of them plus a bronze bust he had made. It was a delight to have such a superb guide take us through the exhibit which in itself was also excellently done.

The other gallery for special exhibitions had the following exhibit when we visited: To See Without Being Seen: Contemporary Art and Drone Warfare. This exhibit had numerous forms of displays including video rooms, web-based projects, sculpture, and photography, all in an interesting layout. 

In the lower level, is the 3000-square-foot Newman Money Museum which has been housed there since 2006, the year the Kemper Art Museum was built.

When one enters you are greeted by a Ben Franklin hologram.

There are numerous interesting money-related exhibits including…

Money Changers and Counters

Not Just a Pretty Face

Music to My Ears

 

This display of different forms of money is very interesting.

 

And what about a dollar bill that is really a $1.25 bill!

And there is the wall of money quotes. 

No museum is complete without a museum shop.  The shop sells books, exhibition catalogues, museum memorabilia, postcards, etc.

One offering at the museum I loved was the use of stools for those who chose not to stand the entire time.  The free stools were stacked on carts on both levels and were easy to carry around to different rooms for one’s sitting pleasure!

Lunch afterwards was less than 5 minutes away at Katie’s Pizzeria Cafe on Clayton Road - http://www.katiespizzacafe.com/menu.html.

Every one of us enjoyed the fried artichoke salad and fresh bread.  That salad is one of my favorites and I have enjoyed it numerous times at Katy’s Rock Hill location.

Some also ordered pizzas.

Comments:  This was a delightful museum.  One could see all the exhibits and the money museum thoroughly in under 2 hours including a tour so it was not overwhelming as a large art museum can be.

The lay-outs of the special exhibitions was excellent and the tour was fabulous.

Obviously the bulk of this museum is changing every few months so one should research the different current displays on the museum’s website when scheduling a visit.  The museum also offers lectures, study sessions, conversation series, spotlight talks, artist talks, and film screenings among other offerings.

In the fall of 2016, the museum will be celebrating its tenth anniversary with special events. 

Because the museum is on a university campus, our tour guide recommended coming on the week-ends when the parking is much less of an issue.

The museum is open every day but Tuesday (and holidays) from 11:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.