Columbia Museum of Art

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The exterior of the new Columbia Museum of Art building, although contemporary in style, preserves earlier appearance through the use of brick veneer and the entrance portico of the institution's Taylor House past.

The brick-paved Boyd Plaza includes outdoor sculpture by works by Henry Moore and Robert Carroll's fountain sculpture Apollo Cascade.

The glass entry doors of the museum open into an atrium which extends to the full two-story height of the building. The roof design, based upon an inverted truss, allows natural light. Since 2010, the entry atrium includes a chandelier composed of bundled strands of red, orange, and gold glass commissioned for this space from glass artist Dale Chihuly. Adjacent to the atrium is a 164-seat auditorium and on its far side is the entrance to the first-floor galleries. Four of these galleries accommodate changing exhibitions and two more display selections of modern and contemporary art from the permanent collection.

The museum's second level contains 14 galleries showing a timeline of history of European and American art from antiquity to the modern era. A small but significant collection of art and artifacts from the ancient Mediterranean world is presented in the first gallery. Included in antiquities presented here are examples of early-Greek ceramics from the R.V.D. Magoffin Collection, a large black-figured Greek lekythos acquired in 1973, the Robert L. Hanlin Collection of 4th-century BC Greek vases from South Italy, Roman glass from the George C. Brauer Collection and a collection of 12 Greco-Roman marble sculptures donated by Robert Y. Turner in 2002. These marbles include a headless standing statue of Hygeia and 11 Roman portrait heads.