The story
The Krannert Art Museum sits on the University of Illinois campus in Champaign, and after the Art Institute of Chicago it is the largest art museum in the state. It opened in 1961, paid for by the industrialist Herman Krannert and his wife Ellnora, as a place where students could study real objects instead of reproductions.
The collection is deliberately broad, close to 10,000 works reaching from ancient Mediterranean and Egyptian pieces through European painting to a strong body of modern and contemporary art and African sculpture. Because it belongs to a university, the displays shift with what the faculty are teaching, and admission is free to anyone who walks in off the quad.
