Cedar Rapids Museum of Art
Cedar Rapids formed an art club in 1895. Ten years later, when they were offered a specially designed gallery in the new Carnegie Library, the club incorporated as the Cedar Rapids Art Association and began exhibiting art in a gallery in the newly built Carnegie Library. The first painting was acquired for the collection in 1906. The Cedar Rapids Museum of Art (CRMA), established in 1905. In the 1960s, the Art Association acquired and renovated a building for itself in a nearby downtown location, the Torch Press Building. The Cedar Rapids Public Library moved to a new building in the 1980s, vacating the Carnegie building where the Art Association was first established. The City of Cedar Rapids offered the original Carnegie building and some adjacent land to the Art Center. In 2002, the CRMA was given the building that houses the original studio of Grant Wood. The new Cedar Rapids Museum of Art was formally opened with John Carter Brown (then Director of the National Gallery of Art) cutting the ribbon in December 1989.