The Sheldon Swope Art Museum exists to collect, preserve, exhibit, and interpret the best of American art, with special emphasis on painting and sculpture of the first half of the twentieth century and on Wabash Valley artists past and present.


Ten years after the death of Sheldon Swope, planning began for the new gallery and the collection to be housed there. The second floor of the downtown Swope Block, a 1901 Italian Renaissance style commercial building that was part of the Swope estate, was gutted and rebuilt as a state-of-the-art exhibition space in a streamlined Art Deco style.

The first director, John Rogers Cox, bought important new works by living artists, such as Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, Charles Burchfield, and Edward Hopper. This original core group of American Regionalists remains the feature for which the Swope is best known nationally and internationally.

On September 26, 1939, the first board of managers was appointed by Judge John W. Gerdink, under the terms of Swope's will.The Swope opened with nationwide attention in 1942, and was featured in The Art Digest.

To be continued...


My wife and I visited this little gem of an art museum several years ago for the express purpose of seeing the Grant Wood painting "Spring in Town." This painting, as well as Edward Hopper's "Route 6, Eastham," have both recently been on display here in the nation's capital, attesting to the incredible quality of these and other works of American art that the Swope owns. The people of Terre Haute are so lucky to have such an institution in their midst!