Museums in Wilmington, Delaware. Museums in Wilmington, Delaware include the Winterthur Museum, the Hagley Museum, the Brandywine River Museum, the Delaware Art Museum, the Delaware Museum of Natural History, Longwood Gardens, and the Delaware History Museum.
The Winterthur Museum and Country Estate is the home of the largest collection of American antiques and decorative arts in the world. It's a 175 room mansion housing the collection of the late Henry Francis du Pont. (The company name's spelling was later changed to DuPont.) The collection has over 85,000 pieces including entire rooms that have been bought from houses that were about to be destroyed throughout the country from New England to South Carolina and Georgia. Whole rooms that were saved from destruction included furnishings, glass, china, silver, paintings, tapestries, carpets ... you name it!
The Hagley Museum on the banks of the Brandywine River is the original home of the DuPont Company. It was founded in 1802 as a water powered gunpowder mill and and lasted until 1921. In the 1950s it was restored as a beautiful museum where they show the gunpowder making process. The original du Pont family mansion from 1803 is also located there with a marvelous collection of antique furnishings, and the grounds are just gorgeous.
The Brandywine River Museum is the home of the Wyeth family paintings including N.C. Wyeth, his son Andrew Wyeth, and his son Jamie Wyeth. The Brandywine School of Painters included Harvard Pyle, Frank Schoonover, Maxfield Parrish, and many others.
The Delaware Art Museum is very well known for its American paintings and illustrations as well as its Pre-Raphaelite collections, blown glass by Dale Chihuly, and lighting installations by James Turrell. A sculpture garden that features "The Crying Giant" by Tom Otterness is another a major collection.
Longwood Gardens is the former estate of Pierre Samuel du Pont. Longwood Gardens covers 1,050 acres, while New York Central Park has only 843 acres. It has fountains, indoor and outdoor gardens, the largest home theater organ in the world, a caravan from the Netherlands, and fabulous topiary gardens with bushes pruned into different shapes. There are rose gardens, rock gardens, and Italian water gardens, as well as a full-sized recreation of the ship that brought the first permanent settlers to the Delaware Valley in 1638 from Sweden.
The Delaware Museum of Natural History has a world famous shell collection, and a bird collection from the Philippines. Scholars come here from all over the world to see the shells, birds, and the birds' eggs that we house.
The Delaware History Museum is a neat museum with interactive displays. In about 45 minutes to an hour you can tour through 400 years of Delaware history. It's a great place for kids of all ages. I love it.
