Qualla: Columbia Museum of Art https://qualla.com/columbia-museum-of-art en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:06 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/n/3/columbia-museum-of-art-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Columbia Museum of Art https://qualla.com/columbia-museum-of-art Columbia Museum of Art: Introduction https://qualla.com/columbia-museum-of-art/ Photo credit Akhenaton06, CC BY-SA 3.0. It used to be a Macy's. Walk into the second-floor European galleries of the Columbia Museum of Art today, and the structural skeleton holding up the ceiling is the same steel framework that once held up the lighting in a downtown department store. When Belk and Macy's both abandoned the corner of Main and Hampton in the 1990s, the museum's trustees did something unusual: they bought the carcasses, demolished one to make a sculpture plaza, and built the new museum inside the bones of the other. The Old Master paintings now hang in galleries whose load-bearing columns once watched shoppers ride escalators to women's wear.

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Image: Akhenaton06 | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/n/3/columbia-museum-of-art-wp/dnn3-columbia-museum-of-art-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Columbia Museum of Art: Begin with the Taylor House https://qualla.com/columbia-museum-of-art/ Photo credit Evelyn De Morgan, Public domain. The Columbia Museum of Art opened in 1950 in the 1908 private residence of the Taylor family, on Senate Street next to the University of South Carolina campus and three blocks from the State House. Local collectors donated the founding pieces - ten Old Master paintings including ...

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Image: Evelyn De Morgan | Public domain

]]> Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/n/3/columbia-museum-of-art-wp/dnn3-columbia-museum-of-art-begin-with-the-taylor-house.mp3 0:06 2 full Columbia Museum of Art: The Kress Gift https://qualla.com/columbia-museum-of-art/ Photo credit Sandro Botticelli, Public domain. The collection became internationally significant in 1954, when the Columbia museum was chosen as one of 95 institutions across the United States to receive donations from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. Kress, a five-and-dime retail magnate, had spent decades buying Italian and ...

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Image: Sandro Botticelli | Public domain

]]> Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/n/3/columbia-museum-of-art-wp/dnn3-columbia-museum-of-art-the-kress-gift.mp3 0:06 3 full Columbia Museum of Art: The 1998 Building https://qualla.com/columbia-museum-of-art/ Photo credit Soulbust, CC BY-SA 4.0. The new home opened in 1998 at Main and Hampton Streets, designed by Bobby Lyles and Ashby Gressette of Stevens & Wilkinson, the Columbia firm that built it into the skeleton of the Macy's department store. The rear of the adjacent Belk building became scaffolding for the TD Bank...

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Image: Soulbust | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/n/3/columbia-museum-of-art-wp/dnn3-columbia-museum-of-art-the-1998-building.mp3 0:06 4 full Columbia Museum of Art: Jasper Johns Slept Here https://qualla.com/columbia-museum-of-art/ Photo credit Soulbust, CC BY-SA 4.0. The American galleries hold work by Gilbert Stuart, Thomas Sully, William Merritt Chase, Washington Allston, and a single Claude Monet. There are furniture pieces by Duncan Phyfe, Gustav Stickley, and Louis Majorelle; stained glass by Tiffany Studios; ceramics from Newcomb Colleg...

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Image: Soulbust | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/n/3/columbia-museum-of-art-wp/dnn3-columbia-museum-of-art-jasper-johns-slept-here.mp3 0:06 5 full