Allen Memorial Art Museum
The fountain and facade of the Allen Memorial Art Museum.
Photo credit: Yvonne Gay Fowler
Founded in 1917, the Allen Memorial Art Museum (AMAM) is recognized today as one of the five best college and university art museums in the United States. Since its beginning, the museum has always been free for everyone. Collections including paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, prints, drawings, and photographs are housed in an impressive Italian Renaissance-style building designed by Cass Gilbert and named after Dudley Peter Allen, a distinguished 1875 graduate of Oberlin College. Allen and his wife, Elisabeth Severance Allen, (later Prentiss) were the museum’s principal benefactors.