The Everson Museum of Art ( ) in Downtown Syracuse, New York is a major Central New York museum focusing on American art. History The museum was founded in 1897 by art historian George Fisk Comfort (who also helped found the Metropolitan Museum of Art); at that time, it was called the Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts. On the evening of 22 January 1897, the inaugural meeting was held in the May Memorial Church in Syracuse. In 1911, it announced that it would seek to collect only American art. Over time the museum occupied several different buildings, including the Onondaga Savings Bank and the Syracuse Public Library, but it outgrew each facility. In 1932, the Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts initiated their Ceramic National exhibitions, which became the most prestigious juried exhibition in the field of ceramics in the forty years that followed. In 1941, Helen Everson made a gift of $1 million to the city of Syracuse for the purpose of erecting an art museum. A groundbreaking took place in 1965, and in 1968 the new Everson Museum of Art opened. The new building was designed by architect I. M. Pei and is regarded as a work of art in its own right. The Everson Museum collaborates with Light Work and the Urban Video Project (UVP) to exhibit video art on the facade of the building, including important works by Bill Viola, Jenny Holzer, William Wegman, among others. In the summer, they host a film series which is very popular for residents of Syracuse. Collection The Everson houses roughly 11,000 pieces of art, including paintings, sculpture, ceramics, and video. The Everson Museum of Art contains one of the most notable collections of ceramic art in the United States. In 1916, The Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts acquired a group of thirty-two works by renowned Syracuse-based potter Adelaide Alsop Robineau. After Robineau's death in 1929, the museum acquired a second group of her porcelains, including the famed Scarab Vase, whose carving reportedly took more than 1000 hours. The museum now contains more than 100 works by Robineau. In 1932, Museum director Anna Wetherill Olmsted founded the Ceramic National exhibitions as a tribute to Robineau. Over the next forty years, the Ceramic Nationals became the preeminent juried exhibition for the field of ceramics. Purchase prizes were given to artists each year, which added pieces by such artists as Waylande Gregory, Maija