The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center

Revealed Anew: Selections from the Collection

About the show

Because a number of the key works from the twentieth-century collection are included in a major exhibition in Japan, the staff of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center wanted to take this opportunity to “turn an eye” to our storage vaults and present a sampling of works, most of which have not been on view recently. In addition to those works now on display in our Permanent Collection Galleries, this roughly chronological exhibition is another opportunity for viewers to further their knowledge of several of the over 17,000 objects in the permanent collection.

The permanent collection has developed from its initial core of a few hundred American and Hudson River School paintings, and 3,000 English drawings and prints, all purchased by Matthew Vassar from college trustee Elias Lyman Magoon. While Hudson River and English art remain concentrations in the collection, other large gifts stimulated and expanded the directions of the collection. For instance, Italian baroque paintings in the early twentieth century and the Felix Warburg Collection of Old Master Prints in the early 1940s provided new tools for teaching at the college. In the mid-twentieth century, numerous gifts of modern works by Vassar alumnae enriched the collection, providing new areas of vital study for students, scholars, and the public at large.

Several of these works on view are drawings or prints which, due to their light-sensitive nature, can only be displayed for short periods of time. Other works are recent gifts or loans. Many other works have not been presented in recent years because of space limitations in the galleries or because of other curatorial priorities.