Joslyn Art Museum, designed as a cultural center for the community, was built as a gift to Omaha from Sarah Joslyn in memory of her husband George, a prominent Omaha businessman and civic leader.  The original structure is one of the finest examples of Art Deco architecture in the nation and employs 38 kinds of marble from seven countries.     

Joslyn Art Museum is noted especially for its collection of art of the American West and is world-renowned for its collection of works by Swiss artist Karl Bodmer, whose watercolors and prints document his 1832-34 journey to the Missouri River frontier with the German naturalist, Prince Maximilian of Wied. 

 A second significant body of work, watercolors and paintings by Alfred Jacob Miller, portrays Miller’s experience in the West of the 1830s. Joslyn’s Western American collection also includes paintings and sculpture by George Catlin, Frederic Remington, and William Robinson Leigh.