At the end of 2008, the Academy Art Museum was selected to receive fifty works of art from New York collectors Dorothy and Herbert Vogel as part of a national gifts program entitled The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States. Exhibition open through November 6, 2010.
The Vogel Collection has been characterized as unique among collections of contemporary art, both for the character and breadth of the objects and for the individuals who created it. Herbert Vogel (b. 1922), spent most of his working life as an employee of the United States Postal Service, and Dorothy Vogel (b. 1935), was a reference librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library.
The Vogel gift, and the resulting exhibitions such as this, was many years in the making. The National Gallery of Art has worked closely with Dorothy and Herbert Vogel since 1991, when it acquired a portion of their collection, through partial purchase and gift from the Vogels. “Gifts such as this and its subsequent display are energizing to the community,” says Academy Art Museum curator, Brian Young. “As our audience well knows, the Vogel gift changed the future of the Academy Art Museum and other re cipient institutions by strengthening its collection of contemporary holdings.”
The best-known aspects of the Vogel Collection are minimal and conceptual art, such as the numerous sheets by Richard Tuttle or the sculptural work of Richard Nonas and André Cadere. But as this exhibition makes clear, there are many figurative and expressionist works by artists such as Claudia de Monte, Michael Goldberg and Moshe Kupferman to name just a few. After this exhibition ends, these works will blend and energize the Museum’s other strong contemporary holdings.
The Tour-Mate that accompanies this exhibition is underwritten in part by donations given in memory of Wayne Bildahl, an enthusiastic audio tour supporter.
Exhibition closed October 6-10 for Museum Craft Show Friday.
Image: Moshe Kupferman, Israeli, 1926-2003 Untitled, 1994 Acrylic, graphite, pencil, charcoal (recto); ink and graphite (verso) on paper, 19 3/4 X 26 inches
www.ACADEMYARTMUSEUM.ORG