Worcester Art Museum

The Worcester Art Museum, also known by its acronym WAM, houses over 35,000 works of art dating from antiquity to the present day, representing cultures from all over the world. The WAM opened in 1898 in Worcester, Massachusetts, and is the second largest art museum in New England. The WAM also has a café, museum shop, library, and a year-round roster of classes for children and adults.
In September 1896, Stephen Salisbury III and a group of his friends gathered together to create the Art Museum Corporation. Salisbury then gave a tract of land, on what was once the Salisbury farm , as well as $100,000 USD to build an art museum. The museum was designed by Stephen C. Earle, a Worcester architect, and formally opened in 1898 with the Rev. Daniel Merriman as its first president. The museum's collection by largely of plaster casts of "antique and Renaissance" sculptures as well as a selection of 5,000 Japanese prints, drawings, and books, willed to the museum from John Chandler Bancroft, son of John Bancroft.

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