Lowe Art Museum

Just one year later (1951), Miami philanthropists Joe and Emily Lowe underwrote the construction of a separate art museum on UM’s still-young campus: the new “Lowe Art Gallery” was formally dedicated on February 4, 1952. By that time, the Lowe had already begun assembling important collections of non-Western art, including significant examples of Asian, Ancient American, and African art. In 1956 Alfred I. Barton donated his extensive collection of Native American art to the Gallery. A 1,300 square foot addition was built that same year to permanently display the Barton Collection, which remains one of the finest such collections in the country. Five years later, the gallery was selected as a regional repository for more than forty works from the Samuel H. Kress Collection of European Renaissance and Baroque art.