Meadows Museum of Art
 Location within Louisiana
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| Established | 1975 |
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| Location | Shreveport, Louisiana, United States |
| Coordinates | 32°29′01″N 93°44′01″W / 32.48361°N 93.73358°WCoordinates: 32°29′01″N 93°44′01″W / 32.48361°N 93.73358°W |
| Type | Art museum |
| Accreditation | American Alliance of Museums |
| Key holdings | Albrecht Dürer's Triumphal Arch |
| Collections | French Indochina art, Inuit art |
| Collection size | Roughly 1,600+ |
| Founder | Algur H. Meadows |
| Website | www |
The Meadows Museum of Art at Centenary College of Louisiana in Shreveport is charged with the collection, conservation, preservation and interpretation of visual art works of museum quality. It is also a vital resource for students studying art history, studio art, and museum management, who frequently serve as interns, docents, and guest curators. The Meadows Museum of Art is the second art museum resulting from the philanthropy of oilman Algur H. Meadows. The first is the Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University.
The Meadows Museum of Art was established at Centenary College of Louisiana in 1975 on the occasion of the College's 150th anniversary. The museum was made possible by a gift from Algur H. Meadows, a Centenary alumnus. In 1969, Meadows purchased 360 pieces of original artwork from the family of the recently deceased French artist Jean Despujols for $250,000, and gave them to Centenary College for the purpose of establishing a second Meadows Museum, just four years after SMU's Meadows was opened. Meadows also gifted $200,000 to the college to remodel the 1926 Arts Building designed by Shreveport architect Edward F. Neild, into a 4000 square-foot art museum. The Arts Building has served several purposes since its construction, including: college classrooms, the library, an administration building, and today the Meadows Museum of Art. Meadows later gave an additional $150,000 to be used for museum maintenance.
Unlike SMU's Meadows, which received Mr. Meadows' large Spanish art collection, Centenary's Meadows Museum began with the Indochina Collection of paintings and drawings by French Academic artist Jean Despujols, documenting his time working in Indochina for the French government between 1936 and 1938. Despujols had previously served as an art professor at Fontainebleau Academy in France in the early 20th century. His Indochina Collection is notable because Despujols' realist style accurately records the various peoples, cultures, landscapes, and religious practices present in an area now including Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, an area that would soon be permanently altered by wars and genocide. Before arriving in Shreveport, the Collection was exhibited in Hanoi and Saigon in 1938, at the Smithsonian Museum in 1950, and the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in 1952. This Collection marks one of the largest collections of French colonial art in existence. In 1951, National Geographic Magazine included twenty-one paintings from the Collection in their article "Portrait of Indochina." Despujols immigrated to the United States during World War II, and lived in Shreveport, Louisiana until his death.
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Wikipedia