By Dan Nonte, University Relations
Contact: (336) 334-4314
Posted 10-16-08
GREENSBORO, NC – The Weatherspoon Art Museum has been selected to receive a gift of 50 works of art from New York collectors Dorothy and Herbert Vogel.
The gifts are part of The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States. Primarily a collection of drawings, the 2,500 works include paintings, sculptures, photographs and prints by more than 170 contemporary artists, most working in the United States.
“It is a tremendous honor that Dorothy and Herbert Vogel selected the Weatherspoon Art Museum as the North Carolina museum to benefit from their Fifty Works for Fifty States project,” said museum director Nancy Doll.
“Their gift is exceedingly generous and reflects their life-long passion for collecting. It is also visionary and, I believe, a testament to the high caliber of the Weatherspoon’s collection. We look forward to scheduling an exhibition of the Vogels’ donation sometime during the next two or three years.”
The Vogel Collection is as unique as the individuals who created it.
Herbert Vogel (b. 1922) spent most of his working life as an employee of the United States Postal Service, and Dorothy Vogel (b. 1935) was a reference librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library.
Prizing their collection above personal comfort, the couple used Dorothy’s salary to cover the expenses of daily life and devoted Herbert’s salary to the acquisition of contemporary art.
With the exception of the collection formed by their friend, artist Sol LeWitt, no other known private collection of similar work in Europe or America rivals the range, complexity and quality of the Vogel Collection.
Inspired by the Kress Foundation’s placement of old master paintings throughout the country in the middle of the last century, the Vogels hope their project will similarly enhance knowledge of the art of our time.
“We hope this will be a truly national program, and that it will make the work of the many artists we admire familiar to a wider audience,” Dorothy said on behalf of the couple. “We also hope our gifts will enable museums throughout the country to represent a significant range of contemporary art.”
The National Gallery of Art, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services are partners in the Fifty Works for Fifty States project.
The National Gallery of Art has worked closely with Dorothy and Herbert Vogel since 1991, when it acquired a portion of their collection. The National Endowment for the Arts is funding the publication of a book, “The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States,” scheduled for release in November.
The Institute of Museum and Library Services is providing funds for the disbursal of the art (under the supervision of the National Gallery of Art) and for the development of a web site – www.vogel50x50.org – to serve as an information center and exhibition area for the project.
Founded in 1941, The Weatherspoon Art Museum at UNCG has one of the foremost collections of modern and contemporary art in the Southeast.
For more information, contact Loring Mortensen, the Weatherspoon’s public and community relations officer, at (336) 256-1451 or lamorten@uncg.edu.
