Walters Art Museum

The Walters Art Museum is a public art museum located in the Mount Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland. It serves as a civic institution housing a collection that spans seven millennia of art from cultures across the world. The museum's foundational collection consisted of 22,000 objects, which was begun by William T. Walters and expanded by his son, Henry Walters, who gifted the collection to the City of Baltimore. Since opening in 1934, the museum has grown to hold more than 36,000 objects, expanding its scope across time, geography, and culture to include Ethiopian art, South and Southeast Asian sculptures, and art of the ancient Americas.

The collection is renowned for its breadth, including ancient art from Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, as well as medieval European and Islamic art. A significant highlight is the medieval collection, which features unique objects such as the Byzantine agate Rubens Vase. The museum holds one of the largest and finest collections of medieval manuscripts and features Late Medieval devotional Italian paintings. The European Renaissance and Baroque holdings include paintings, sculpture, furniture, and arms and armor. Henry Walters was particularly interested in the courtly arts of 18th-century France and assembled a notable group of Russian objects, including two Fabergé eggs, making him one of the first major American collectors of Russian art.