Permanent Collections

The collections of the Erie Art Museum contain over 6,000 objects. Gifts, bequests, and purchases accomplish expansion of the collection. The collections include:

American paintings, drawings and sculpture
European paintings, drawings and sculpture
Prints—American, European and Japanese
Photographs—American, historic and contemporary
Photographs—Japanese, 19th Century
American Arts & Crafts Movement, Roycroft Shops objects
American Ceramics—historic and contemporary
20th Century Art Baskets
Greater India—Sculpture, bronze and stone
China—porcelains, jades, embroidery, furniture, etc.
Japan—porcelains, netsuke, bronzes, embroidery, etc.
Tibet—thangkas
Other—various cultures, including Etruscan, Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Pre-Columbian

The most significant objects in the collections are the bronze and stone sculptures from India, which range from 2nd century Gandharan Buddhist stone sculpture to world class examples of South Indian bronzes from the Chola and Vijiyanagar Dynasties (10th to 16th centuries). Almost this entire collection, along with a significant portion of the other Asian collections, came to the Museum as the bequest of James D. Baldwin. Although long intended for a major museum outside the region, Mr. Baldwin eventually came to believe that the art museum in his home town had grown to a point where it was worthy of receiving his collection, and capable of caring properly for it. He had begun to transfer parts of the collection by gift when his untimely death in 1986 resulted in the bequest of the entirety. Building on the popular and artistic success of an exhibition of Tibetan art in 1991, the Museum has cultivated a relationship with collectors who have assisted in building the collection of Tibetan paintings into a significant group of works ranging from the 14th to the 19th centuries.

The Museum's collections grew by 386 works during 1997 and 1998, including paintings by Richard Estes, Jack Lembeck, George Green, Moses Billings, Joseph Plavcan, Michiko Itatani, Neil Daugherty and others; American ceramics by Grueby Faience, Frederick Walrath, Paul Revere Pottery, Charles Clewell, Claude Conover, Roxanne Swentzell, and others; prints by Goya, Kunisada, Toyokuni, Hiroshige, Anuszkiewicz, Daumier, Bartoli, Gonzalez-Torres, Deckard, Rowlandson, Alexander Wilson, Bruce Carter, and others. The Museum also added 29 thangkas to its increasingly notable collection of Tibetan art, and acquired several outstanding examples of Erie area folk art, including a mid-19th century woodcut printing block, a stoneware jug, and another decoy.

The Museum originated as an Art Club in 1898, expanded to an Art Center in the 1960s, and became a museum in name as well as in practice in 1983. A Collection Management Policy was adopted in 1981. As the sole art museum in northwestern Pennsylvania, its collections provide the only opportunity for many residents to experience quality works of art. The collections are diverse but by no means encyclopedic. Varied exhibitions are drawn from the collections and presented as part of the changing exhibit schedule. The collections also support the Museum's traveling exhibition program, which reaches many people who do not get to the Museum galleries.

Through its collections and exhibitions, the Museum also acknowledges the local artist community, which is the constituency upon which it was founded. The Museum's collections include the work of many local artists, as a means of both recognizing their importance to the community and helping to maintain the cultural history of the region.