The Permanent Collection

When the Chazen Museum of Art opened in the fall of 1970 as the Elvehjem Art Center, the collection of 1,600 paintings and works on paper had been acquired by the UW–Madison since 1885. Today, there are over 24,000 works of art in the museum’s collections representing the entire spectrum of art history across culture, period, media and genre. Many works have entered the museum’s holdings as part of thematic collections assembled and given by generous donors. In a sense, the Chazen is a collection of more than forty collections.

notable collections About the CollectionProvenance

Browsing the collection

You may browse the entire collection online. Following these instructions is a search field, which allows you to search for particular objects in the collection. The search is followed by a group of filters, which you can use to filter your search results by artist, region or country, object type, century, notable collection and color. The artist and country filters include an input box, which you can use to search for a particular artist or country to filter by.

Following the filters are the objects in the collection, 50 to a page. Each object includes a thumbnail image of the work (if an image is available), the name of the artist, the title of the work, and the year the work was created. The objects displayed in this section are automatically updated based on your search criteria and the filters you have chosen.

The total number of objects that match the your search and filters is displayed above the objects listing. Next to the total is a checkbox you can use to show only objects that are currently on view in the museum.

Click on an object to view more details about it.

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  • Paintings
  • Sculpture
  • Works on Paper
  • Applied & Decorative Arts
  • Miscellanea

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