Columbia Museum of Art

The Columbia Museum of Art at 1515 Main Street in Columbia, South Carolina, is the oldest art museum in the state, founded in 1916 and housed since 1998 in its current building anchoring the revitalized north end of downtown Main Street. The building's design integrates natural light throughout a sequence of 25 galleries spanning 5,000 years of art history. The permanent collection's greatest strength is the Samuel H. Kress Collection of Renaissance and Baroque European paintings, assembled by the Kress Foundation and distributed to regional museums across the United States in the mid-20th century. Columbia's Kress holdings include works by Sandro Botticelli, Paolo Veronese, Pietro Perugino, and Bernardo Strozzi — a concentration of Italian masters unusual in a mid-size American city museum. The collection also encompasses significant Asian decorative arts, including Chinese porcelain and Japanese prints; American paintings from the colonial period through the 20th century; and a design collection covering furniture, silver, and textiles. Rotating temporary exhibitions have ranged from fashion and illustration to photography and contemporary South Carolina art. The museum's public programming includes films, lectures, family workshops, and the Southeastern Quilt and Textile Symposium. Admission is $12 for adults and free for children under 12; community free days are offered regularly, including Sundays. The museum is within walking distance of the University of South Carolina campus, the South Carolina State Museum, and the Vista entertainment district. A ground-floor café serves lunch on select days. The museum publishes a permanent collection catalogue and maintains digital records of its holdings.