Walters Art Museum

The Walters Art Museum is a public art museum in Baltimore’s Mount Vernon neighbourhood with collections spanning ancient to 19th-century art. It grew from the private collections of William T. Walters and his son Henry Walters and now displays works across several connected buildings.

Key holdings include ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern objects, medieval and Renaissance European works, Asian art and a significant assembly of European paintings and decorative arts collected in the 19th century. Gallery spaces combine a 19th-century mansion with purpose-built exhibition wings.

The core collection was formed by the Walters family in the 19th century and was bequeathed to the city of Baltimore; the museum opened to the public in the early 20th century and developed its modern display complex over subsequent decades.

The museum sits on North Charles Street in the Mount Vernon cultural district, adjacent to Baltimore’s Washington Monument and within walking distance of other central civic and cultural institutions.

• Scope of the collection: The museum's collection covers more than five millennia of world art and is housed across a nineteenth-century mansion and later gallery buildings in Baltimore's Mount Vernon neighbourhood.
• Free admission: General admission to the museum is free, making the collections widely accessible to visitors and local residents.

What to See #

• Ancient and Near Eastern collections: Galleries of ancient art containing Egyptian, Near Eastern and classical objects spanning several millennia of material culture.
• Medieval and Renaissance collections: Medieval and Renaissance European galleries with illuminated manuscripts, sculpture and panel painting from roughly the 5th to 17th centuries.
• Asian collections: Asian art galleries covering objects from East and South Asia, including ceramics, sculpture and ritual pieces.
• European and 19th-century collections: European painting and 19th-century galleries that display paintings, decorative arts and sculptures assembled by the Walters family over the 19th and early 20th centuries.