Collections
Access the Database
MoFA’s Permanent Collection includes close to 7,000 objects. While we work on improving the digital accessibility of MoFA’s collections, you are welcome to access information about specific art works through the Museum’s collections management database.
Account name: MoFA Guest
Guest password: MoFA
Note: This is not an intuitive system. After you log in, it will take a few seconds for a set of folders to appear. (These folders are BIG!) Click on the “Permanent Collections” folder, and you will be routed to an empty Filemaker page. Click the arrow in the top left corner of the toolbar. Select “Layout,” and then “Web Layout.” Use the forward and back arrows, located in the top left of the toolbar, to scroll through the records. If you would like to search for a particular artist, click on the magnifying glass, in the toolbar, enter their name in the appropriate field, and press return.
Please feel free to contact Jean Young, MoFA’s Registrar and Collections Manager, if you have any questions about MoFA’s Permanent Collection or if you need assistance finding information about specific works, e-mail: jdyoung@fsu.edu.
About the Collections
MoFA’s Permanent Collection contains many individual donations and purchases that greatly enrich the museum’s capacity for meaningful educational programs, research, and exhibitions, including works by Trevor Bell, Deborah Butterfield, Alexander Calder, Judy Chicago, Salvador Dalí, Francisco Goya, Dionne Lee, Ed Love, Henri Matisse, Keisha Scarville, Pablo Picasso, and Robert Rauschenberg, among many others.
Ball Collection
In 1992, a courier arrived at the Museum with forty works of art. This courier was fulfilling the bequest of a former soldier who had found the drawings and paintings that now comprise this collection in a destroyed artist’s studio in Europe during WWII.
Carter Collection
A wide variety of ceramic vessels and sculptures from Indigenous coastal cultures including the Moche, Chimú, Lambayeque, Chancay, Paracas, and Nazca, donated by John and Mary Carter in 1944.
Chezem African Collection
A gift from Jim Chezem in 1991, this collection includes wood carvings and several small Ashanti figures.
Sonia and Stanley Cohen Collection
Over 100 objects in a variety of mediums including contemporary Native American silversmithing and works from Africa, Europe, Japan, and Mexico. The Cohens donated this collection in 2011. Highlights include a painting by Carlos Alfonzo, a ceramic vessel by Jacquie Stevens, African headpieces and statuary, and “Taylor” by Deborah Butterfield.
Cranbrook Print Collection
From the Printmaking Department at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, two print portfolios employing various techniques—lithography, intaglio, screen print, letter press, and relief—produced by faculty and graduate students.
Cressman Collection
Donated by the Cressman family in the late 1970s, this collection centers around a range of ornamental glass objects reflecting a variety of makers and techniques, including Wedgwood, Meissen, Peachblow, Agata, Pomona, and Burmese, among others.
Thomas A. Deans Collection
In 2011, Thomas Deans gifted to the Museum four engravings by J.M.W. Turner. Dating to 1831, these prints are adapted from a suite of the artist’s watercolors commissioned as illustrations for an edition of Sir Walter Scott’s collected Poetical Works.
Galloway Collection
More than 200 black and white photographs of early twentieth-century life produced by contract photojournalists working for the Ewing Galloway Agency, which was once the largest photography agency in the United States. Mark Jacobson donated this collection in 1997
Gosney Collection
A range of art and cultural objects from Asia, including an opium pipe, Buddhist prayer wheel, and hand-carved ivory tusk, donated by Cliff B. Gosney Jr. in 2010.
Graf/Nause Collection
Forty prints by a variety of post-war American artists, gifted by Dr. Graf and Dr. Nause in 1973.
Kirk Collection
A bequest from Jim and Biddie Kirk in 1994, this collection includes twenty-five bronze sculptures and restrikes of original compositions by Frederic Remington (1861-1909).
Kirkpatrick Collection
A donation of 67 prints made by Yoshida Hiroshi in 1929. This series depicts the Japanese woodblock process through iterations of the printing of “Night Scene after the Rain on Kagurazaka Dori.”
London Arts Group Collection
Serigraph prints, screenprints, and collotype prints by Tom Blackwell, John Baeder, Ronald Kleeman, Arne Besser, Illya Bolotowsky, Mel Ramos, and others. This donation from Joseph A. Schuster and Eugene Schuster was brokered by the London Arts Group.
Mason Collection
A bequest from the estate of Penelope Mason, a professor and scholar of Japanese art. This collection includes prints demonstrating the stages of a woodblock series, a wedding chest, and four scrolls from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Molitch Collection
Nine English prints and one eighteenth-century oil painting on porcelain donated by the estate of Dr. and Mrs. Matthew Molitch in 1991.
Jane and Neil Mooney Collection
In 2010, the Mooneys donated to the Museum nearly two hundred West African and Meso-American artifacts, including pottery, masks, and wooden sculptures from various regions and periods.
Northwest Coast Native American Basketry
A gift from Mary Douglas Lewis in 1954, this collection is comprised of Native American basketry from the Pacific Northwest.
Palm Press
A limited-edition portfolio of original nineteenth-century photographs of various types, including daguerreotype, salt print, and tintype, purchased from Palm Press in 1989.
Prasse-Bittel Collection
Prints, including examples of woodcut, drypoint, lithograph, engraving, and etching techiques by various artists donated by Mr. and Mrs. Lynn Prasse-Bittel in 1989.
Pryor Collection
A gift from Dahl, Lottie, and William Lee Pryor in 2015, this collection includes forty paintings, drawings, and prints from the sixteenth through the twentieth century.
Seymour Collection
Asian prints, paintings, porcelain, stationary, dolls, books, fans, and other art objects donated by Arthur and Mayce Seymour.
Shapiro Collection
A bequest from Howard Shapiro in 1990, this collection consists of 109 photographs by Arthur Taussig taken during the artist’s trips to Texas, Florida, Washington D.C., Mexico, and other locations.
The Viki D. Thompson Through the Flower Collection
Works from the Birth Project by Judy Chicago, including Swaddled by Nature, Birth Goddess Embroidery, The Crowning Needlepoint 3, and others, a generous donation from Through the Flower honoring Dr. Viki D. Thompson-Wylder’s decades of service to MoFA.
Walmsley Collection
Over a period of more than twenty years, William Walmsley, a printmaker and avid collector, and his wife Dorothy donated in excess of 900 works to MoFA – contemporary portfolios “Continental Drift” and “Drawn to Stone,” prints by Francisco Goya, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Anders Zorn, and Salvador Dalí, works by FSU Art Department faculty and students, and works in diverse mediums by Walmsley himself.
Warhol Foundation Collection
161 Polaroid photographs and black and white gelatin silver prints by Andy Warhol, used as the basis for painted portraits and other works. The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts generously donated this collection in 2008.