Walters Art Museum: Chinese Snuff Boxes.

Spent the morning at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore today.  It'd been years since I was last there, and I'm sure the occasion was for some major exhibition.  Seems like the Walters doesn't do that sort of thing very much anymore, and so it dropped off my radar.  Returning there today was like rediscovering an old friend.  What a joyous reunion, too. 

The museum sits on a block off of Charles Street just south of the George Washington Tower, one of Baltimore's iconic landmarks.  The original building was put up at the turn of the twentieth century and converted into a museum full time in 1934.  In 1974, a new annex was opened that more than double the available gallery space.  From its formal public opening until the year 2000, it was known as the Walters Art Gallery (which is what I first came to know it as), and in that year it changed its name to reflect it's larger role and allay confusion that the world gallery created in the public's perception of the place.  I still all it the Walters Art Gallery all the time.  Between 1998 and 2001 the entire structure underwent a major renovation that completely updated the infrastructure of the original building and reformatted the design of the addition.  This ended up creating more galleries and a more organic design as well as adding a multi-storied atrium foyer with suspended spiralling staircase at the new intersection of the two.  This is now the main entrance, however, I still prefer to enter through the Charles Street entrance.

As with past excursions shared, I'm gonna break up my visit into chunks with themes.  The first offering is from the galleries on the ground floor of the original building.  You enter into an Italianate courtyard that was based on the design of the 17th-century "Collegio dei Gesuiti" in Genoa.  To your right are galleries dedicated mostly to French decorative arts and a large collection of ornate Chinese snuff boxes. To your left are galleries made in the manner of the 17th century Dutch Cabinet collections and one gallery full of Medieval/Renaissance armor and weaponry.  As a whole the Walters Art Museum houses items that go all the way from Ancient Egypt and Sumeria right up through Art Deco ceramics and jewelry.

Let us start with some of the Chinese snuff boxes, okay?  

An alcove to the decorative arts galleries full of Chinese snuff boxes!