The story
Dayton, Ohio started its art museum in 1919, and among the founding patrons was Orville Wright, who with his brother had flown the first aeroplane in that same corner of the country a decade and a half before.
The museum grew out of the generosity of one woman, Julia Shaw Carnell, who had fallen for Italy on a youthful trip and wanted a building to match. She paid for a hilltop hall, finished in 1930 in the style of a 16th-century Italian Renaissance villa, with round-arched windows and a grand staircase borrowed from a cardinal's country house near Rome.
Inside, the collection spans 5,000 years and leans on its Asian and European holdings, with paintings by Rubens, Monet and the American Edward Hopper. It sits above the river, looking back at the city that built it.
