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LIFE
Huntington Museum of Art opens exhibits of most recent aquisitions
The Recent Acquisitions and the Dorothy and Herbert Vogel exhibits are displayed at the Huntington Museum of Art on Saturday, Aug. 28, 2010, in Huntington.
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Sometimes it is better to receive than to give -- just ask the Huntington Museum of Art.
The museum has just opened two new exhibitions that highlight just some donated art treasures.
Just opened on Saturday, Aug. 28, in the Daywood and the Daine Galleries, "Recent Acquisitions: Gifts, Bequests, and Purchases 2005-2009," highlights some of the more than 400 works donated to the museum in the past five years.
That exhibit filled with a dazzling variety of art including 20th century masters of Haitian art; Asian ceramics; American and European decorative arts, paintings, works on paper folk art, glass and video.
Also, just put up Saturday in the Daywood Gallery, is "The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States," that features the museum's art donated by New York art collectors Dorothy and Herbert Vogel, a New York librarian and a U.S. Postal worker who distributed 2,500 works from the Vogels' collection of contemporary art with 50 works going to a selected art institution in each state.
Jenine Culligan, senior curator, said the museum has been blessed to have such generous patrons such as the late, great glassblower and Blenko designer Winslow Anderson, who had kept his expansive Haitian art collection at the museum since the late 1970s, and then bequeathed it to the museum when he passed away in 2007.
Those colorful paintings and the intricate tin-smithed works take up a one wall.
"That is part of the permanent collection now and is an amazing asset," Culligan said. "We eventually do plan on traveling that exhibit because most people just love the Haitian works."
While it was an easy call to pull up some of those Haitian pieces, it was a tad more difficult to choose which newly acquired pieces to bring up out of the recently expanded vault, which has more than 14,000 art pieces in the permanent collection.
"It's been fun to see what's been acquired over the last five years and to be able to bring them out of the vault and for people to get to see them sooner instead of later," Culligan said. "We did a show previously that was recent gifts 2000 to 2004, so five years is a good amount, and in the past five years it is almost an embarrassment of riches. We have really gotten some wonderful things."
Recent gifts also feature several art pieces including two Egyptian bronzes, some Georgian silver and some beautiful Asian objects that belonged to the late art collector, Isabelle Gwynn Daine, who also bequeathed the museum more than $2 million for a new gallery, the Isabelle Gwynn and Robert Daine Gallery, that opened in February.
Culligan said that before the last museum accreditation, they worked on a collection development plan that has been a really useful tool for adding new collectors and building on the museum's collection that has a wide array of art including American and European fine and decorative art, Asian art, works on paper (photography, drawings, water colors and prints), and contemporary works from American and European artists.
"That is kind of what we have in the show, which is a little bit of everything," Culligan said.
Of course, the museum, which has more than 4,000 pieces of locally-made glass, also showcases some of its new glass gifts, including some new pieces donated by Bill Blenko Jr., that includes some works from former Blenko designer Don Shepherd, who was at Blenko from 1974 to 1988.
One of the largest recent gifts to the museum has been the 50 art works donated in 2008 by New York-based art collectors, Dorothy and Herbert Vogel, who made history giving 50 art works to museums in 50 states.
Culligan said the museum is honored to show these works and to share this love story between a couple and their passion for supporting young artists.
In fact, at 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 24, the couple's story of the couple's extraordinary life will be shown in the documentary film, "Herb and Dorothy," will be shown in the museum's Grace Rardin Doherty Auditorium.
"I think part of the reason they've become so well known is that people can relate to them," Culligan said. "Everybody thinks you have to be a billionaire to buy art, but the Vogels are showing everybody you can be a postal worker and a librarian. They just made a decision early on to use her salary for living and his salary for buying art."
Filled with colorful conceptual and minimalist works that range from tiny balsa wood construction to a 61/2-foot tall painting, the collection really fills a void for the museum, Culligan said.
The exhibit would not be possible without a summer's worth of work from intern Amy Ochsner, a graduate student at Syracuse University. Ochsner contacted many of the artists to get background on the specific pieces as well as their relationship with the Vogels.
Both exhibits highlight the deep generosity of art lovers who have shared with the museum thus reaching generations to come.
"We are always collecting and the title of 'Recent Acquisitions: Gifts, bequeaths and purchases' is really the three ways we get art," Culligan said. "We do purchase items as well, but we really rely on people to donate. We don't have large pots of money to buy anything, but people have been so generous over the years and seeing this show I think people will get an idea of how many people are putting things into the museum."
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