Worth Noticing -- The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States -- Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts -- Imagine Dr. Barnes, minus the fortune.

Watching the Vogels attending various Manhattan galleries and museums during the 1970s and 1980s was a curious delight -- they were almost like living works of art.


The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States

Dates:
June 26 – September 12, 2010

Location:
Walter & Leonore Annenberg Gallery, Samuel M. V. Hamilton Building
Description:
Imagine Dr. Barnes, minus the fortune.

Herbert and Dorothy Vogel collected Minimalist, Conceptual and post-1960s art over the course of more than four decades. Herbert (b. 1922) worked as a postal clerk, and Dorothy (b. 1935) as a reference librarian. Setting their collecting priorities above those of personal comfort, they used Dorothy's salary to cover their living expenses and devoted Herbert's salary to the acquisition of contemporary art.

In 1992 they pledged more than 2,000 paintings, drawings and sculptures, to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and are now distributing 2,500 more pieces to institutions across the country.

PAFA has been designated to receive fifty works from The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States program being administered by the National Gallery. These fifty works, a diverse assortment of mostly small-scale works on paper (plus some small canvases, constructions, and sculptures), comprise the exhibition. Of the 31 artists included are examples by important figures such as Robert Barry, Lynda Benglis, Lucio Pozzi, Edda Renouf, Nam June Paik, and Richard Tuttle.

While the Vogels’ best-known art interests are minimal and conceptual art, their collecting also encompasses the diversity of directions that characterize the post-minimalist period, including works of a figurative and expressionist nature.

As the first collectors to buy work by many artists who were then unknown to a wide audience, the Vogels offered encouragement at the start of the careers of several figures who went on to achieve considerable acclaim. Owing to these artists' continuing close relationship with the collectors, many works of art collected by the Vogels were gifts, marking special occasions—such as Dorothy and Herbert's birthdays and wedding anniversary—and often personally inscribed. In this sense the Vogels' collection is a keen reflection of their friendships with artists.

Curator:
Julien Robson, Curator of Contemporary Art