The DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, is a museum dedicated to British and American fine and decorative arts from 1670-1840, located in Williamsburg, Virginia.Situated just outside the historic boundary of Colonial Williamsburg, DWDAM was founded with an initial 1982 donation by DeWitt Wallace and his wife Lila Bell Acheson Wallace — co-founders of Reader's Digest.The Wallaces donated $12 million to finance reconstruction of the nation's first public mental hospital, the Public Hospital of 1773 and construction of the decorative arts museum — to be connected to the hospital by an underground concourse. Having initially opened in 1985, the museum has since expanded to include the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum and will undergo another expansion to open in 2019 with a new, street-level entrance.The museum features diverse collections related to the founding of the United States — including furniture, paintings, silver, numismatics, ceramics, tools, textiles, glass, maps, weapons, media and other objects from the permanent Colonial Williamsburg collection.FacilityDWDAM is accessed through and underneath the Public Hospital of 1773, which commemorates the first mental health facility in the Colony of Virginia. The facility features a restaurant as well as the Hennage Auditorium, which offers lectures and musical performances.In 2006, the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum relocated from its original location on English Street to share an expansion of the Wallace museum. Though co-located in a single building, both collections retain their respective names — and are together known as the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg.
