The summer exhibition at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, A Taste for the Modern: Gifts from Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller, Edna Bryner Schwab, and Virginia Herrick Deknatel, will showcase 48 paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, and photographs that have been donated to the Art Center by three Vassar alumnae.
On view from June 24 through September 4, 2011, A Taste for the Modern, will examine for the first time the modern art collecting of these three generous alumnae – Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller, Edna Bryner Schwab, and Virginia Herrick Deknatel – and the development of their tastes for the modern. In addition, the exhibition, curated by Patricia Phagan, the Philip and Lynn Straus Curator of Prints and Drawings, will explore how all three of their collecting histories have profoundly affected and will continue to influence the visitor’s and Vassar student’s experience of exploring modern and contemporary art at the college.
In the permanent collection of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, works of art by 20th-century modernists vie for attention, providing excellent examples for contemplating the moments and moods associated with artists and movements of that century. Luscious, nature-evoking canvases and watercolors stand out by the circle of American artists around gallery owner and photographer Alfred Stieglitz. Provocative oils and prints by mid-century expressionists project new, alternative, and tense worlds. How did these and many other adventurous modern works come to reside at the Art Center?
The answer may be seen through the important gifts to the Art Center from the three generous alumnae to be on view in the exhibition. Several key works will also be on view in the permanent collection galleries. One section of the exhibition will explore mid-century works given by Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller (1909-1992), Vassar class of 1931. The remaining two sections explore works donated by Edna Bryner Schwab (1886-1967), Vassar class of 1907, and Virginia Herrick Deknatel (1906-2009), Vassar class of 1929. Some of the works include:
Paul Klee’s drawing Schwanenteich (Swan Pond), William Baziotes’s Night Mirror, Bradley Walker Tomlin’s No. 4, and Karel Appel’s Child and Beast II given to the Art Center by Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller.
John Marin’s turbulent and groundbreaking watercolor Thirty-Fifth Street and Fifth Avenue at Noon, and several of his transformative landscapes dominate the works given by Edna Bryner Schwab to the college.
Virginia Herrick Deknatel’s gifts encompass a wide arc, from several works by Picasso to drawings by Cézanne to bronzes by David Smith and Anthony Caro.
All three of these women collected in close concert with authorities in the field of modern art. Blanchette Rockefeller sought advice for her collection primarily from Alfred H. Barr, Jr., the first director of the Museum of Modern Art. Edna Bryner Schwab and her husband Arthur purchased numerous works of avant-garde American art from Stieglitz. Virginia Deknatel partnered with her husband, Frederick Deknatel, professor of modern art at Harvard University, in collecting post-impressionist and modern art. After his death, she continued this tradition.
A catalogue will be published in conjunction with the exhibition and will be available for sale at the Art Center and online through the website: http://fllac.vassar.edu. The catalogue essay, by Patricia Phagan, presents groundbreaking research on the collecting histories of these three Vassar alumnae, and is an important contribution to the literature on the collecting of modern art in America. A Taste for the Modern is generously supported by the Evelyn Metzger Exhibition Fund.
Background on collecting in the early 20th century
In the first few decades of the 20th century, the Old Masters and French Impressionists garnered most American art collectors’ interests, and modern art appealed to a small audience. In New York City, Stieglitz premiered the first American exhibitions of the European avant-garde and a handful of American modernists at his 291 gallery, and in his journals Camera Work and 291. He maintained his prominence with the Anderson Galleries in 1921-25, and then with his later galleries, the Intimate Gallery of 1925-29 and An American Place of 1929-46.
The large, much-publicized display of modern art at the Armory Show in New York in 1913 and subsequent showings in Chicago and Boston threw contemporary, controversial European art into the public arena with puzzling oils by Marcel Duchamp and others. Progressive individuals, however, began to acquire these works. Soon, collectors Mary Quinn Sullivan, Lillie P. Bliss, and their friend Abby Aldrich Rockefeller initiated and advanced the idea for what became the Museum of Modern Art, which opened in New York in 1929, with post-impressionist painter Paul Cézanne becoming the aesthetic foundation for its permanent collection.
Image: William Baziotes (American, 1912-1963), Night Mirror, 1947 Oil on canvas Gift of Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd (Blanchette Hooker, class of 1931)
Admission to the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center is free. The Art Center is open to the public Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, 10:00am–5:00pm; Thursday, 10:00am–9:00pm; and Sunday, 1:00–5:00pm. Located at the entrance to the historic Vassar College campus, the Art Center can be reached within minutes from other Mid-Hudson cultural attractions, such as Dia:Beacon, the Franklin Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt national historic sites and homes, and the Vanderbilt mansion. The Art Center is wheelchair accessible.
For additional information, the public may call (845) 437-5632 or visitfllac.vassar.edu