The Cleveland Museum of Art is one of the foremost art museums in the world, having internationally renowned collections that span the globe. Local industrialists Hinman B. Hurlbut, John Huntington, and Horace Kelley underwrote the museum's original endowment, and Jeptha H. Wade II (grandson of the Western Union Telegraph founder) donated the land. Planning for the museum unfolded in a series of fits and starts over nearly twenty-five years before construction finally proceeded. Designed by the Cleveland-based architectural firm Hubbell & Benes in the Neoclassical Revival style and faced with white marble quarried in Tate, Georgia, CMA opened to the public on June 6, 1916.
Wade's original donation of land for the museum included the stipulation that it be used "for the benefit of all the people forever," a vision that CMA embodied. From its inception, the museum was free two days each week and later became free year-round, apart from special exhibitions. Of similar importance, CMA embraced education as a focus. Whiting shepherded the formation of an educational department that offered many programs for children and adults. Later museum leaders continued to emphasize educational programs, including innovative uses of technology.
Inside the museum, notable features included the Armor Court, an enduring exhibit that resulted from the original museum director Frederic Allen Whiting's insistence on having a prominent collection of armor near the center of the new museum. Another important space, the Garden Court, featured a fountain pool, palms, and tropical plants, but nearly a century later it was transformed into a gallery of Italian Baroque paintings and sculptures.
Outside, the setting for the museum reflects early work by the Garden Center of Greater Cleveland (now Cleveland Botanical Garden), which originated in a boathouse on the east side of Wade Lagoon. The Garden Center hired Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.'s landscape design firm to fashion the Fine Arts Garden to complement the museum. The resulting design created a series of two outdoor "rooms" and otherwise embellished the sweeping vista from Euclid Avenue to the museum's south facade. Among the original installations were Chester Beach's Fountain of the Waters, a marble fountain and sculptures, and his twelve plinths representing signs of the Zodiac. The Fine Arts Garden opened in 1928. Ninety years later, the Nord Family Greenway opened a perpendicular vista that encourages people to move between the museum and the Maltz Performing Arts Center across Doan Brook.
In the post–World War II years, CMA became a fixture in the international art collecting circuit as a result of substantial bequests, including from the John L. Severance Fund. The arrival of Sherman Lee, who became the third director of CMA in 1958, did much to elevate the museum's stature. Originally from Seattle, Lee, who attended Western Reserve University and started his career as a curator of Asian art at the Detroit Institute of Art just before the war, oversaw a major expansion of CMA's Asian collection during his quarter-century tenure as director. Fortuitously, in the same year he became the director, CMA completed its first expansion and received a large bequest from Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Midway through Lee's time as director, the museum expanded again. Hungarian-born Modernist architect Marcel Breuer designed the addition, which opened in 1971.
Near the end of Lee's directorship in 1983, the museum opened its third addition. From there, the collection continued to grow — so much so that by the early 21st century, such a small proportion of CMA's collection could be displayed that another major expansion was necessary. This time, museum leaders opted to remove the 1958 and 1983 additions, neither of which was considered as architecturally significant as Breuer's 1971 wing. The museum's $350 million expansion, designed by Rafael Viñoly and completed in 2014, included the massive new Ames Family Atrium between the 1916 and Breuer buildings, flanked by new East and West Wings. The expansion, one of the largest construction endeavors in the city's history, reinforced CMA's stature among the leading art museums on the eve of its second century.
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