April
11 , 2003 A
Visual Feast on
View through July 20
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Annie
Leibovitz (American, b. 1949)
Julie
Foudy, Midfielder, Seminole County Sports Training Center,
Sanford, Florida. Gelatin silver print, 2001 (negative
1996). Madeleine Pinsof Plonsker (class of 1962) Fund.
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What do ancient coins
have in common with eighteenth-century European apothecary jars
and contemporary photographs by Annie Leibovitz? Thanks to generous
gifts by many individuals, these and other important works of
art have recently been added or promised to the Mount Holyoke
College Art Museum's permanent collection. They are on view
in the exhibition A Visual Feast: Promised Gifts and Recent
Acquisitions in the museum's Weissman Gallery through
July 20.
"As keepers and stewards of natural and cultural heritage,
museums are by design collecting institutions," says Art
Museum Director Marianne Doezema. "One way they expand is
by accepting donations. The Mount Holyoke College Art Museum is
no exception, and this exhibition recognizes the generosity of
so many individuals who have donated precious objects or funds
for purchases that build our collection's strength."
Historically, alumnae have been generous benefactors of the museum,
and that continues to true. Dr. Stephanie Grinnell Beling '57
has promised a beautiful collection of contemporary American,
eastern European, and Scandinavian art glass. Renee Scialom Cary
'48 has given an eighteenth-century silver coffeepot. Another
alumna has placed on long-term loan old master and modern prints
by Piranesi, Durer, Holbein, Canaletto, and Manet. The painting
Little Egypt by Harvey Quaytman and the pastel drawing
Fossils, Feelings by Stuart Diamond evidence the generosity
of Renee Conforte McKee '62, owner of a New York gallery.
A collection of English portrait and landscape paintings, including
works by George Romney, Nathaniel Dance-Holland, Francis Wheatley,
Henry Walton, and William Marlow enrich the museum's holdings
of eighteenth-century British art, thanks to Dr. and Mrs. John
K. Knorr III (Elizabeth Walker '37).
Other items have come from collectors outside the alumnae community
who have been impressed by the museum's collections, exhibitions,
and professional staff. After seeing the College's exhibition
featuring its second-century portrait bust of Faustina the Elder
in 1999, for instance, numismatist Mark Salton donated 265 ancient
gold, silver, and bronze Roman coins depicting notable women or
female allegorical and mythological figures. Other admirers have
given box assemblages and collages by American artist Joseph Cornell;
a group of European apothecary jars and mortars dating from the
Renaissance to the eighteenth century; and a group of nineteenth-
and twentieth-century masterpieces, including works by Milton
Avery, Hans Hofmann, Emil Nolde,
J. M. W. Turner, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro, and John Constable.
Collector Norma Marin, daughter-in-law of American painter John
Marin, has promised more than 170 modern American paintings, sculpture,
and works on paper that will be rotated among Mount Holyoke, Smith,
and Wellesley Colleges.
Recent purchases,
made possible by monetary gifts to the museum, are also on display.
They include a neoclassical landscape by French impressionist
Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, a landscape painting by the Dutch
painter Jan van Goyen, and portraits by photographer Annie Leibovitz.
Barbara Johnson Parnass '48 helped the museum purchase the
photograph Yard Eggs by Sally Mann, whose work was featured
in the museum's 1999 exhibition Still Time.
"Visitors will
be struck by the spectacular quality and diversity of our newest
additions," says Doezema, "and we are so pleased that
last year's expansion of gallery space allows us to display
them."
The
counter is
1,888
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