Dahesh Museum of Art

The Dahesh Museum of Art in New York is the only US museum dedicated exclusively to 19th- and early-20th-century European academic art - that school long dismissed by modernism, which produced salon painting, Orientalism and history scenes. It traces back to Salim Moussa Achi, a Lebanese writer who, under the pseudonym Dahesh, assembled a collection of roughly 2,000 works including pieces by William Bouguereau, Jean-Leon Gerome, Edwin Lord Weeks and Lawrence Alma-Tadema. After Dahesh's death in 1984 the collection passed to a foundation; the museum opened in Manhattan in 1995. Since losing its permanent galleries in 2007, the institution mounts temporary exhibitions at partner venues and curates online; the collection rotates through US universities and allied museums. Anyone serious about taking academic art seriously knows this collection.