CHICAGO, Oct. 30 (UPI) -- The Terra Museum of American Art in Chicago will close permanently on Halloween, with its collection going to the Art Institute of Chicago on a 15-year loan.
Daniel Terra, a chemicals magnate, who died in 1996, assembled the collection of 700 works during a 50-year period, with the collection now estimated to be worth $175 million, the New York Times reported Saturday.
Terra, the son of Italian immigrants who made a fortune in ink and photographic chemicals, first collected Impressionist landscapes by European artists, but later concentrated on American Impressionism and the Hudson River School.
He founded the museum in 1980, in Evanston, Ill. In 1982, Terra bought Morse's "Gallery of the Louvre" for $3.25 million, at the time a record for an American painting.
He later moved the museum to Chicago's's Michigan Avenue, but with only 8,000 square feet available for galleries, the museum lacked space for amenities, such as an auditorium, restaurant or cafe and parking lot.
"I didn't feel that the vast majority of Chicago really gave a damn one way or another," said Marshall Field V, head of the Terra Foundation for the Arts. "What Dan chose to collect -- and actually, I do, too -- was in a field that didn't particularly resonate with people."
