Chazen Museum of Art

What Chazen Museum of Art does

The Chazen Museum of Art is a non-profit university art museum located on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, founded in 1970 as the Elvehjem Art Center and renamed in 2005 following a $25 million gift from the Chazen family. The museum operates across two connected facilities: the original Elvehjem building (1970, designed by Harry Weese) and the Chazen expansion (2011, designed by Machado and Silvetti), which together provide approximately 86,000 square feet of exhibition, storage, and programmatic space built at a project cost of $43 million. Its permanent collection comprises more than 25,000 works spanning diverse periods and cultures, with particular strengths in Japanese woodblock prints and modernist sculpture.

The museum serves UW-Madison students, faculty and staff, K-12 audiences, the broader Madison community, and regional visitors, with free admission and 84 hours of weekly public operations. Core products are exhibitions (drawn from the permanent collection and traveling loans), educational programming, and collection-based scholarship; supporting on-site revenue is generated through a museum café and store. Operational funding is sourced from university budget allocations, a tiered membership program ranging from $1 to $5,000+, philanthropic gifts and grants (including support from the Chazen family, Lane family, Mellon Foundation, Art Bridges, and the Straus Family Foundation), and earned income.

The museum is currently executing a comprehensive, object-centered reinstallation of its permanent collection, with galleries closed through fall 2026. Recent strategic activity includes extended public hours (2019), a $500,000 Mellon Foundation grant supporting digital collections and curatorial initiatives (2020), and the appointment of Erica DiBenedetto as curator (2026) to support the reinstallation. The institution is staffed at approximately 59 employees and functions as a hybrid educational and cultural facility embedded within the university.

Name

Chazen Museum of Art

Legal name

Chazen Museum of Art

Website

https://chazen.wisc.edu

Company type

Private

Founded year

1970

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

51–100 employees

Short description

The Chazen Museum of Art is a non-profit university art museum at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that houses over 25,000 works across diverse periods and cultures, offering free admission, extended weekly hours, exhibitions, and educational programming to students, faculty, K-12 groups, and the broader public.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Art Museum

NAICS

Museums (712110)

akta.pro primary industry

Art Museums (THAJADAA)

akta.pro secondary industry

Art Galleries & Exhibition Spaces (Commercial & Nonprofit) (THAJADAH)

Keywords

• Art museum exhibitions
• University art collection
• Permanent collection galleries
• Museum educational programs
• Curatorial temporary exhibitions

Headquarters

HQ city

Madison

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2C

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Personnel, Operations, Infrastructure, Marketing or Sales, Technology or R&D, Supply Chain

Revenue model

1. Museum Memberships: The Friends of the Chazen membership program offers tiered membership levels from $1-$99 (Patron) up to $5000+ (Director's Circle), with benefits including cafe discounts, reciprocal museum programs, event access, and private tours.
2. Donations and Grants: Museum receives philanthropic support from donors including Simona and Jerome A. Chazen ($25M gift), Terese and Alvin S. Lane (70+ sculptures), and foundation grants including from Mellon Foundation ($500,000), Straus Family Foundation, and Art Bridges Foundation.
3. Chazen Café: The museum operates a café on premises offering food and beverages to visitors, generating ancillary revenue.
4. Museum Store: The museum maintains a retail shop selling merchandise connected to the collection.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels5 records

Core offering

The Chazen Museum of Art is a free public university art museum that displays and stewards an over-25,000-work permanent collection spanning diverse world cultures and the full spectrum of art history. It complements the permanent galleries with 10-12 rotating temporary exhibitions each year, educational and public programming, event hosting, a Works on Paper Study Room, an Academic Studio, and on-site amenities including a café and museum shop. A multi-tiered Friends of the Chazen membership program sustains engagement and recurring support.

Product overview

The Chazen Museum of Art operates as a university art museum with a dual-building facility (Chazen and Elvehjem buildings) offering permanent collection galleries displaying over 25,000 works of art, rotating temporary exhibitions, educational programs, event hosting, and visitor amenities including a café and museum shop. The museum's offerings are supported by a membership program (Friends of the Chazen) with multiple benefit tiers and reciprocal partnerships with other museums. The institution serves both the UW-Madison campus community and the general public with free admission.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Permanent Collection Galleries Public galleries displaying over 25,000 works of art spanning global cultures and the full spectrum of art history, including paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, ceramics, glass, and other media across two buildings (Chazen and Elvehjem). Open to visitors with free admission.
• Temporary Exhibitions Rotating program of 10-12 temporary exhibitions each year featuring diverse themes, international artists, and collections on loan or drawn from partner institutions. Free to view during open hours.
• Friends of the Chazen Membership Program Annual membership subscriptions at five tiers (Patron $1-$99, Sponsor $100-$499, Partner $500-$1,999, Artist's Circle $2,000-$4,999, Director's Circle $5,000+), providing café discounts, CAM and NARM reciprocal museum access, digital communications, event invitations, exhibition previews, private curator tours, and private events with the Director.
• Educational Programs Educational programming for UW-Madison students and faculty, K-12 school groups, and the general public, including guided school tours, Sunday Afternoon Live concerts, public programs, and the ART•SPIN community outreach initiative.
• Event Hosting and Facility Rentals Facility rentals and event coordination services in the 160-seat auditorium and other museum spaces for campus and community events.
• Works on Paper Study Room Dedicated study room allowing close examination of works on paper and collection objects by appointment, supporting scholarly research and teaching.
• Chazen Café On-site café open Monday through Friday offering food and beverages to museum visitors, with a 10% member discount and operated in partnership with UW-Madison Union.
• Museum Shop Retail shop selling art-inspired gifts, books, and museum-branded merchandise connected to the collection, managed by an in-house Retail Coordinator.

Quantifiable outcome

• The museum was recognized as the most-open museum among peers with 84 hours per week of operation
• +1 more outcomes

Named customers4 records

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles5 records

Technology focussed No

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Partnerships

One partnership is on record.

• UW-Madison LibrariescoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerCollaborative partnership for the Mellon-funded 'Coordinating Cultural Heritage Collections' project, combining museum and library digital collections infrastructure.

Scale indicators5 records

Recent moves9 records

Expansion highlights4 records

Direct peers

• Krannert Art Museum: The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's art museum operates a similarly sized teaching collection, free public admission, and K-12/academic programming, functioning as a parallel Big Ten university art museum.
• Davis Museum at Wellesley College: A liberal-arts-college art museum that pairs an academic teaching mission with a permanent collection and rotating exhibitions, sharing the Chazen's dual academic-public-access orientation.
• Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum: Michigan State University's contemporary-leaning art museum within a public Big Ten research university; comparable academic-engagement mandate, free-admission policy, and reliance on philanthropy for capital projects.
• Smart Museum of Art: The University of Chicago's art museum offers a comparable university-affiliated art museum model with free admission, academic engagement, and a multi-thousand-work permanent collection spanning cultures and periods, making it the closest institutional peer to the Chazen.
• Mead Art Museum: Amherst College's teaching art museum provides a closely analogous model: a university-based, free-admission collection of several thousand works with academic and K-12 programming.
• University of Michigan Museum of Art: A Big Ten public university art museum with free admission, a large multi-period permanent collection, rotating temporary exhibitions, and significant K-12 and academic engagement programs — directly comparable in mission, scale, and operating model to the Chazen.

Broad incumbents

• Harvard Art Museums: Harvard's multi-gallery art museum complex operates as a broader incumbent in the university art museum space; while larger in scale and resources, it shares the academic-affiliation and teaching-collection model.

Regional players

• Madison Museum of Contemporary Art: Located in the same Madison, WI market as the Chazen, MMoCA focuses on modern and contemporary art with free admission; it competes for the same regional visitor pool and overlapping donor base.
• Milwaukee Art Museum: Wisconsin's largest art museum with a far larger collection and paid-admission model; serves a regional Midwest audience and competes for tourism, donor mindshare, and traveling-exhibition partnerships.
• Minneapolis Institute of Art: A major Midwest general art museum with free general admission and a 90,000+ work collection; serves as a regional benchmark for scale, programming, and donor development within driving distance of Madison.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/ChazenArtUW
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/chazen-museum-of-art

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles7 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

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M&A

Investments

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Frequently asked questions about Chazen Museum of Art