The Butler Institute of American Art opened in 1919 and was established by industrialist Joseph G. Butler Jr. as the first in the nation devoted solely to American art. The institute’s mission is to preserve and collect works of art in all media created by U.S. citizens. The institute's holdings now exceed 20,000 individual works, and the Butler is known worldwide as "America's Museum."

Butler financed the museum's building, designed by the famous architecture firm of McKim, Mead & White, and helped start a collection that now includes important paintings by Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Edward Hopper, Charles Sheeler, William Gropper and many others. Each year, the museum draws 130,000 visitors to more than two dozen exhibitions at its main building on Wick Avenue in Youngstown and its branches in Trumbull County and Salem. It operates annually on a budget of $2 million, an exceedingly modest amount given the museum's productivity.