The Williams College Museum of Art is home to a permanent collection that spans the history of art and serves as the foundation for its multidisciplinary approach to learning.

An active, collecting museum, the Williams College Museum of Art is noted for its stellar collection of American art from the late 18th century to the present. With the largest collection in the world of works by the brothers Charles and Maurice Prendergast, the museum is a primary center for study of these American artists in a transatlantic context of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Other major strengths are modern and contemporary art, photography, prints, and Indian miniature painting.

Special exhibitions organized by museum staff, faculty, students, and guest curators focus on new scholarship and alternative perspectives. Landmark exhibitions organized by the museum over the past two decades include: Graphic Design in the Mechanical Age: Selections from the Merrill C. Berman Collection (1998), Introjection: Tony Oursler mid-career survey, 1976–1999 (1999), Prelude to a Nightmare: Art, Politics, and Hitler's Early Years in Vienna 1906–1913 (2002), Kara Walker: Narratives of a Negress (2003), Moving Pictures: American Art and Early Film 1880–1910 (2005), Jackson Pollock: Beneath the Surface, A Tribute to Kirk Varnedoe '67 (2006), Beautiful Suffering: Photography and the Traffic in Pain (2006), and Drawing on Hopper: Gregory Crewdson/Edward Hopper (2006). As well as commissioning new art, the museum emphasizes the development of innovative exhibitions that place art in a broad cultural context; explore the connections between past and present; and raise critical questions about the interpretation of art and the writing of art history. 

The Williams College Museum of Art was established in 1926 to provide Williams College students with the opportunity for firsthand observation of works of art, a privilege the college’s leadership maintained was essential to the study of art. With the art department, the museum is credited with playing a critical role in the making of the "Williams Mafia," a remarkable group of alumni who went on to lead major US museums, including Brent Benjamin (St. Louis Art Museum), Michael Goven (LA County Museum), Thomas Krens (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum), John Lane (Dallas Museum of Art), Glen Lowry (Museum of Modern Art), Earl Powell III (National Gallery of Art), James Wood (J. Paul Getty Trust) and most recently James Rondeau (Art Institute of Chicago), Shamim Momin (Whitney Museum of American Art), Laura Hoptman (New Museum of Contemporary Art), Nancy Spector (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum), and Charles Wiley (Dallas Museum of Art).  The museum is located on the campus of Williams College in a building designed by the noted architect Charles Moore. 

In 2005, after a national search, Williams College appointed Lisa Corrin to the museum’s directorship.  Ms. Corrin came from the Seattle Art Museum, where she had served as deputy director of art and artistic director of the new acclaimed Olympic Sculpture Park and, from 1997–2001, as the Chief Curator of the Serpentine Gallery in London. Lisa Corrin took over the reins of leadership from the museum’s former director Linda Shearer, who in turn succeeded Thomas Krens.

Tuesday through Saturday, 10 am - 5 pm Sunday, 1-5 pm The museum is closed Mondays (except Labor Day and Columbus Day) and New Year's Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

Admission is free. The museum is wheelchair accessible.

Parking in front of the museum is limited. Additional parking is available across the street in the lower lot behind the Thompson Memorial Chapel and in other lots on campus (please see campus map).

Group Tours Bus tours are welcome. Groups are urged to notify the museum three weeks in advance. Tour guides are available by appointment. For information, please contact Emily Schreiner, Coordinator of Education Programs.