Fine Arts Collection

The Fine Arts Collection incorporates a large array of visual arts material collected and generated by the Cleveland Museum of Natural History over the course of its existence. This material includes rare, historical, and artisanally produced artifacts that have deliberate aesthetic value and are relevant to the Museum’s mission.  

The core of the collection was formalized as a distinct department in the 1980s, and it maintained a close relationship to the Cultural Anthropology Collection over subsequent decades. The Fine Arts Collection is distinguished by a largely European focus and, in the case of its Native American holdings, a focus on works produced by contemporary Native American artists.  

Some noteworthy aspects of the collection include: 

• An extensive collection of prints in a variety of techniques, including full first-edition sets of Audubon’s Birds of America and later Viviparous Quadrupeds, original ornithological illustrations by Roger Tory Peterson, and stone prints by a selection of contemporary Inuit artists
• A selection of original watercolors by conservationist pioneer Henry Wood Elliott, representing his travels in the Alaskan territory when it was newly acquired from Russia, and his observations of the fur seal trade
• The Hexter Collection of Astronomical and Navigational Objects, a selection of sundials, compasses, and other objects used for the study and measurement of the sky and its movements, produced and finely decorated by European and Persian metal workers and artisans between the 15th and 19th centuries
• Original large-scale paintings representing geological, paleontological, and biological topics commissioned by the Museum from renowned 20th-century illustrator Jay Matternes
• Cast paleontological models created by several early 20th-century sculpture studios, including products by Margaret Flinsch-Buba, Charles R. Knight, and Charles Gilmore
• Original Marchand Studio wax botanical models and paleontological dioramas commissioned by the Museum in the mid-1940s
• Original Paul Jonas Studio biome dioramas commissioned by the Museum in the early 1960s