The mission of the La Salle University Art Museum is to further the University’s Lasallian educational objectives by helping students, other members of the University community and the general public to experience significant, original works of art in an intimate setting and to place them in meaningful contexts. In addition to acquiring, preserving and exhibiting its collections, the Museum offers viewers an opportunity to sharpen their aesthetic perception and to investigate the interrelationships which emerge between art and other disciplines.
The La Salle University Art Museum opened its doors in 1976 as a place for La Salle students, especially those majoring in art history, as well as for the communities in the surrounding areas, to experience art in an intimate setting.
The beginnings of the museum were ten years earlier at one of the University’s fall honors convocations. John Walker, director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, delivered the address, and well-known collector Lessing Rosenwald and American artist Andrew Wyeth received honorary degrees. The University announced that it was beginning a degree program in art history and had begun acquiring art.