Group Tours

The Delaware Art Museum welcomes groups from around the region, across the country, and around the world to enjoy our internationally-acclaimed collection.  The following information is designed to assist group leaders and tour operators in planning group visits to the Museum. If you have any questions, please contact Cynthia Smith, Group Tour Coordinator, at 302.351.8514 or via e-mail at csmith@delart.org

Guided group tours of the Museum’s permanent collection and special exhibitions are offered to groups of 20 or more by reservation. These tours are led by trained Docents and are available Tuesday, between 10 a.m. and 12:30 p.m.; Wednesday through Saturday, between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.; and on Sunday, between noon and 4 p.m. All public areas are accessible to persons with disabilities. Groups may also schedule a curator talk and/or an on-site lunch or tea prepared by our renowned catering service. Due to the high demand for guided tours, it is suggested that reservations be made at least four weeks in advance.

British Pre-Raphaelites
The Delaware Art Museum’s collection of Pre-Raphaelite art is the largest outside the United Kingdom and is comprised of paintings, drawings, photographs, decorative arts, and illustrated books.  The Pre-Raphaelites first gathered in London in 1848. They rejected the conventions of their day and focused on the past, particularly the Middle Ages—the time “before Raphael.” Their subjects were drawn primarily from literature, including Shakespeare, the Bible, and Arthurian legend.

Howard Pyle & American Illustration
The Delaware Art Museum was founded in 1912 to preserve and exhibit the works of Wilmington-native Howard Pyle. Pyle filled his riveting illustrations with drama and emotion, and his iconic pirates serve as the inspiration for pirates in popular culture to this day. The Museum also displays a number of works by Pyle’s students, including N. C. Wyeth and Maxfield Parrish, and other famous illustrators.

Contemporary Painting & Sculpture
From the American Scene to Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art to Postmodernism, the trends of the past several decades of American art up to the present are on display in masterpieces by a number of major artists, including Edward Hopper, Jacob Lawrence, Robert Motherwell, Louis Nevelson, and Dale Chihuly. Outside, the region’s first Sculpture Garden takes visitors beside the works of important contemporary sculptors such as Tom Otterness and George Rickey.

Collection Highlights
View a selection of masterpieces from the Delaware Art Museum’s permanent collection, which includes American art and illustration from the 19th century to the present and the British Pre-Raphaelite movement of the mid-19th century.

Love, Lies & Oil Paint—A Tantalizing New Tour!
A feast for the senses, the Love, Lies and Oil Paint tour provides an enchanting experience for those who love art, creativity and fine food.  The tour includes a fascinating “love and lies” themed tour in the museum’s galleries led by our expert docents.  Optional additions include an art workshop where your group can create and embellish stationary for letters and love notes as well as a delicious and decadent fondue luncheon featuring mouth-watering brie cheese and chocolate fondues with an assortment of dipping items. Click here to download a PDF.

Special Exhibitions
The Delaware Art Museum presents three to four major traveling exhibitions each year for a limited time. Please click here for our schedule of upcoming exhibitions.

Enhance your group’s experience with an exclusive Curator Talk by one of the Delaware Art Museum’s resident experts. Discover compelling stories and fascinating details about artwork and artists in the collection. Curator Talks are held in the Museum’s DuPont Auditorium and last about 1 hour. Curator Talks are available exclusively to groups and must be scheduled at least four weeks in advance based on the curator’s availability. The price for a Curator Talk is $160.00.

Our Curator Talks include:

The British Pre-Raphaelites: A Lively Interpretation
Margaretta Frederick, Curator of the Bancroft Collection of Pre-Raphaelite Art

An outré group of avant-garde artists working in Victorian London, the Pre Raphaelites shocked critics with their risqué subject matter and style. Their paintings depicted beautiful women with striking long red hair and were signed with mysterious initials “PRB.” Learn about the lives and loves behind the sumptuous paintings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, Edward Burne-Jones, and other members of this fascinating circle of artists.

Howard Pyle: With My Own Eyes
Mary Holahan, Curator of Collections and Exhibitions

Howard Pyle so completely cast himself into his subject matter that when he painted the American Revolution, he could “smell the gunsmoke.” Pyle intensely saw and felt what he was depicting and illustrated his subjects—swashbuckling pirates, ephemeral mermaids, and revolutionary soldiers—with intense drama and emotions. This allowed Pyle to create compelling scenes of adventure, romance, history, and legend. He strove to capture, as he said, “a vivid flash of real truth.”

John Sloan and His Circle: The Inside Dirt on the Ashcan School
Heather Campbell Coyle, Assistant Curator of 20th- and 21st-Century Art

John Sloan and his friends, including Robert Henri, William Glackens, Everett Shinn, and George Luks, upset the genteel factions of the early 20th-century-art establishment with their depictions of urban life, earning themselves the derisive nickname of the “Ashcan School.” Ultimately, Sloan’s paintings and etchings of New York City came to define the city in the popular imagination. The Delaware Art Museum owns its unparalleled collection of art by Sloan and his circle thanks to the generosity of Helen Farr Sloan, the artist’s second wife.

Lunch and tea services are available and will be prepared by our excellent catering service. Click here to download the menu.

The Museum will be happy to work with your schedule and welcome your group during pre-opening hours (before 10:00 a.m.) by special appointment. Also, the Museum is open until 9:00 p.m. on the first Friday of the month as part of Wilmington’s Art on the Town program, and groups have the option of reserving an evening tour on these nights. There is a flat fee of an additional $100 for group tours during special hours.

See more of the beautiful Brandywine Valley by scheduling a package visit to multiple attractions.

Master Artists of the Brandywine Valley

Your group will marvel at the world-renowned art of Brandywine Valley artists—Howard Pyle, N.C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth, and Jamie Wyeth—while touring the Delaware Art Museum and the Brandywine River Museum.

Pirates, mermaids, and ghosts haunt the otherworldly paintings of Howard Pyle, an illustrator and influential teacher, at the Delaware Art Museum. Enjoy a guided tour of Pyle’s works as well as those of his student N. C. Wyeth as you wander through the recently renovated Museum. Relax with an upscale lunch in the Museum’s contemporary East Court. Afterwards, tour the Brandywine River Museum, a refurbished gristmill and the home to an unparalleled collection of works by three generations of the Wyeth Family—N. C., Andrew, and Jamie—as well as works by Howard Pyle. Enjoy magnificent views of the Brandywine River from the glass-walled lobbies. Click here to download a PDF.

Art and Gunpowder!

Explore the Delaware Art Museum, home to a world-renowned collection of art, and Hagley Museum and Library, the original du Pont family home and gunpowder works.

Begin your day with a tour of the captivating collection of the Delaware Art Museum. Explore the Museum’s collection of 19th-century British Pre-Raphaelite art—the largest in the country—as well as an extensive collection of American art and illustration. Afterwards, enjoy a delicious lunch in the Museum’s contemporary East Court. Then you will travel to Hagley Museum and Library, where the du Pont story begins. In 1802, a young French immigrant, E. I. du Pont, found the Brandywine River to be the perfect spot to build his black powder mills and establish the DuPont Company. Click here to download a PDF.

Fine Art and High Tea

Spend the morning exploring the dazzling collection of art at the Delaware Art Museum. Discover the magnificent works of 19th-century British Pre-Raphaelite artists and the remarkable paintings of Howard Pyle, an illustrator and native Wilmingtonian. Afterwards, enjoy a delicious lunch in the Museum’s contemporary East Court and shopping in the Museum Store. For the afternoon activities, your group will drive just a few miles to the elegant Hotel du Pont, which was designed by Pierre S. DuPont in the early 20th century. After an introductory tour of this landmark hotel, relax with an exquisite afternoon tea in the Brandywine Room, home to over a dozen paintings by members of the Wyeth Family. Click here to download a PDF.

To schedule a Guided Group Tour, click here, or contact Cynthia Smith, Group Tour Coordinator, at 302.351.8514 or via e-mail at csmith@delart.org.

If you would like to be added to the Museum’s group tour mailing list, click here.