[1] When the museum was founded in 1950,[2] the first-exhibited art collection consisted of the gifts and bequests of local collectors and ten Old Master paintings, several by Joshua Reynolds, Scipione Pulzone, Juan de Pareja, and Artus Wolffort.

The circumstances appreciably changed in 1954, when the museum was included among the 95 institutions nationwide selected to receive donations of Renaissance and Baroque art from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.

Despite the additional gallery space made available by the removal of the science displays and the planetarium, by the 1990s the museum had outgrown the Taylor House complex and the 7,000 sq.

The Belk building was partially demolished to allow for the creation of a public space and sculpture garden, called Boyd Plaza, in front of the new museum.

[7] Designed by architects Bobby Lyles and Ashby Gressette of the Columbia-based firm of Stevens & Wilkinson,[7] the new museum opened to the public in 1998 with 22,000 sq.

The exterior of the new museum building, although postmodern in style and mirroring the former Macy's facade, preserves its earlier appearance through the use of brick veneer and the entrance portico of the institution's Taylor House past.

The glass entry doors of the museum open into the Robinson Jr. atrium and Dubose-Preston Reception Hall, which extends to the full two-story height of the building.

Since 2010, the atrium has included a 14-ft. (4.27m) chandelier composed of bundled strands of red, orange, and gold glass by Dale Chihuly, commissioned by The Contemporaries, the museum's young professional group.

Artists represented include: The sequence of the European tradition was interrupted in 2009[9] by the introduction of gallery space for displaying Chinese works of art donated in 2003 and 2007 by Dr. Robert Y. Turner>ref?.