Delaware Art Museum

The Delaware Art Museum has two collections of national importance: the largest Pre-Raphaelite holdings outside Britain, built around the Samuel Bancroft bequest of 1935 (Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Hunt, Millais — the lot), and a strong American collection particularly rich in N.C. Wyeth and the Brandywine illustrators who worked in the surrounding valley.

Beyond the headline collections, the museum holds American modern and contemporary work, a small but serious craft collection, and a regular programme of temporary exhibitions. The Copeland Sculpture Garden outside is part of the visit. The building itself, a 2005 reconstruction by Ann Beha Architects, is well-lit and easy to navigate.

Allow two to three hours.

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A story
The Delaware Art Museum holds the largest collection of Pre-Raphaelite art outside the UK — left to the museum in 1935 by Samuel Bancroft, a Wilmington industrialist who collected Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Holman Hunt with single-minded intensity. Several of the works are not just important examples but the defining versions of their subjects.