Halsey Cooley Ives (27 October 1847 – 5 May 1911) was the founding director of the St. Louis School and Museum of Fine Arts.

[3] Ives was also a landscape painter, but is best remembered for the organization, administration, and popularization of art in Saint Louis, Missouri.

During the Civil War he was employed as a draftsman by the United States Government, a job which sent him to Nashville, Tennessee.

[7] In 1894 Ives was appointed by the National Bureau of Education to examine and report upon courses of instruction and methods of work in foreign art museums and schools.

He began in Giza and traveled all over the old world, tracing the development of art throughout history and its relation to the rise of civilization.

[6] Through the efforts of Ives in the 1890s, then a member of the city council, an ordinance was passed authorizing the erection of an art building in Forest Park.

Ives introduced a bill into the General Assembly for an art tax to support the maintenance of the museum.