Halsey C. Ives

Halsey Ives
Halsey Cooley Ives (1894-94), by Anders Zorn. Oil on canvas, Saint Louis Art Museum.
Born	October 27, 1847 Montour Falls, New York, U.S.
Died	May 5, 1911 London, England
Known for	Founder of the Saint Louis School and Museum of Fine Arts

Halsey Cooley Ives (27 October 1847 – 5 May 1911) was the founder of the Saint Louis School and Museum of Fine Arts. The institution later became two distinct bodies; the Saint Louis Art Museum, and the Washington University School of Art which includes the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. Ives was also a landscape painter, but is best remembered for the organization, administration, and popularization of art in Saint Louis, Missouri.

Ives was born in Montour Falls, New York, then called Havana, to Hiram DuBoise Ives and Teresa (née McDowell) Ives. He studied in the School of Art at South Kensington in England, and took courses at other art schools. During the Civil War he was employed as a draftsman by the United States Government, a job which sent him to Nashville, Tennessee. After the war, he traveled throughout the country and into Mexico, working as a designer and decorator. He settled in Saint Louis, to become part of the faculty at Washington University.

In 1874 Ives started a free evening drawing class. This was the beginning of the Saint Louis School and Museum of Fine Arts, formally inaugurated in 1879. The museum and school formed the art department at Washington University. His work drew the attention of influential and powerful people in the city. Through the financial support of Wayman Crow a new building for the museum was completed on what is now Locust street in 1881. Ives was called to Chicago in 1892 to organize and conduct the art department of the World's Columbian Exposition, or the Chicago World's Fair as it is often called, that was to take place the following year. He was selected because of his famous broad-mindedness, his interest in the equal representation of all forms of art.