Hunter Museum of American Art

The Hunter Museum of American Art is a museum in Chattanooga, Tennessee, built on an 80 foot bluff above the Tennessee River. It occupies a mansion built in 1904 in the classical revival style by architect Abram Garfield, son of President James A. Garfield, and the museum was established in 1952 through the Benwood Foundation created by George Hunter and Anne Thomas. The building grew through a brutalist addition in 1975 and a contemporary addition designed by Randall Stout in 2005 that now serves as its main entrance, and the combined structure received national recognition in 2006 for its structural steel design. The museum holds more than 3,000 works of American art from the colonial period to the present, described as the most complete collection of American art in the Southeast, and draws about 65,000 visitors a year.