The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has received one of the largest and most significant gifts in its history, the Lane Collection, comprising more than 6,000 photographs, 100 works on paper, and 25 paintings. It is one of the finest private holdings of 20th-century American art in the world and encompasses an unparalleled collection of photographs.
Charles Sheeler, Lunenburg 1954. Oil on canvas. The Lane Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The gift includes Charles Sheeler’s entire photographic estate of nearly 2,500 works; an equal number of images by Edward Weston; and 500 photographs by Ansel Adams. The Lane Collection also features paintings and works on paper by major American modernists, including Arthur G. Dove, Georgia O’Keeffe, Stuart Davis, and John Marin, as well as Charles Sheeler. The gift was made to the Museum by Saundra B. Lane, who, with her late husband, William H. Lane, has been a longtime Trustee, friend, and supporter of the MFA.
“This gift from MFA Trustee Saundra Lane transforms the Museum’s holdings,” said Malcolm Rogers, Ann and Graham Gund Director of the Museum. “The superb collection assembled by Saundra and Bill is a very personal one, reflecting the Lanes’ cultivated tastes and their close relationships with a number of major artists of the 20th century.”
The 2,500 works by Weston (1886–1958), a pioneering modernist who has been called the “quintessential American photographer of his time,” include his portraits, nudes, still lifes, landscapes, and cityscapes, as well as his forays into surrealism. (More than 40 of these Weston photographs are currently on view in “Edward Weston: Leaves of Grass” in the MFA’s Art of the Americas Wing.)
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