Boosters Sketch Plans For Bingham Museum

A group of people are proposing an art museum be put in the old Jackson County Courthouse in Independence, Missouri, in an effort to help generate money for the $10 million restoration of the courthouse where Harry Truman served as judge in the 1920s and 1930s. The museum would feature the art of local nineteenth-century artist George Caleb Bingham. Both Independence lawyer Ken McClain and Kansas City mortgage banker James Nutter, Sr., like the proposal. The article mentions that Bingham did more than 400 portraits of mostly state and regional figures. The State Historical Society of Missouri has 28 Binghams in their collection including his "General Order No. 11," the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art has 17 Bingham paintings, and the St. Louis Museum has 18 Bingham paintings. Many others are privately owned.