Vogel 50x50

In 2009, the Yellowstone Art Museum received exciting news. The immense, famed collection of Conceptual and Minimalist art amassed by Herb and Dorothy Vogel was going to be given away, and given away in quite an unusual fashion. The Vogels’ collection—numbering thousands of works—was divided into two key groups. The first group, about 2,500 works, was to be donated to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The remainder was to be dispersed throughout the United States under a program administered by the National Gallery of Art, called “Fifty Works for Fifty States.” The Vogels wished to donate fifty works of art from their collection to each of the fifty states. We anxiously awaited the news and were thrilled when the institution selected in Montana was the Yellowstone Art Museum!

Artists who are included among the fifty works in the Montana gift include Stephen Antonakos, Will Barnet, Robert Barry, Charles Clough, Pinchas Cohen Gan, Claudia de Monte, Richard Francisco, Michael Goldberg, Don Hazlitt, Neil Jenney, Martin Johnson, Stephen Kaltenbach, Steve Keister, Mark Kostabi, Wendy Lehman, Michael Lucero, Joseph Nechvatal, Richard Nonas, Lucio Pozzi, Edda Renouf, Daryl Trivieri, Richard Tuttle, and Ruth Vollmer.

This will be the first time that the YAM has exhibited this extraordinary gift in its entirety. Be part of the celebration of this honor for the state of Montana.

In 2008 the Weatherspoon Art Museum was gifted 50 works on paper from the collection of New Yorkers Dorothy and Herbert Vogel. A retired postmaster and librarian, the Vogels began collecting contemporary art in the early 1960s, developing close relationships with many of the artists whose works they acquired. With the help of the National Gallery of Art, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the couple decided to gift 2,500 works from their collection of 4,000+ to public institutions throughout the nation, calling the program The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States. The Vogel's generous donation to the Weatherspoon is celebrated in this exhibition that features the work of Stephen Antonakos, Robert Barry, Lynda Benglis, McWillie Chambers, Charles Clough, Richard Francisco, Don Hazlitt, Jene Highstein, Ralph Iwamoto, Bill Jensen, Stephen Kaltenbach, Steve Keister, Alain Kirili, Michael Lucero, Joseph Nechvatal, Richard Nonas, Lucio Pozzi, Edda Renouf, Judy Rifka, Alexis Rockman, Lori Taschler, Daryl Trivieri, Richard Tuttle, and Mario Yrissary.

Funding for this exhibition was made possible through the generous support of Bob and Lissa Shelley McDowell.

In the fall of 2008, New York collectors Dorothy and Herbert Vogel gave the Academy 50 works from their important collection of contemporary art, all by American artists of international significance, including Robert Barry, Bill Jensen, Mark Kostabi, Joel Perlman, David Reed, Judy Rifka, and Richard Tuttle.



Their generous gift is part of The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States, an ambitious initiative coordinated with the assistance of the National Gallery of Art, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, with the goal of distributing 2,500 objects from the Vogel's extensive collection to a designated institution in each of the 50 states.

To celebrate this generous gift—and significant expansion of the Academy's holdings in mid-20th-century art—the Academy has organized a major exhibition that brings the Vogel collection together with related work from the Academy’s permanent collection—including Marcel Duchamp’s Boîte Series G. An introduction to minimalist, post-minimalist, and conceptual art—and a glimpse into the collecting practice of an extraordinary couple—this exhibition humanizes the seemingly esoteric world of high modernism.

Funding for Exquisitely Modern: 50 Works from Herbert and Dorothy Vogel is made possible by the Waikiki Parc Hotel, Dr. Diane Chen and Dr. Jan Koch-Weser, Jim and Cherye Pierce and the Academy Guild.

Herbert Vogel, a retired postal clerk and his wife, Dorothy, a former librarian, spent 45 years and their life savings collecting contemporary American art. Recognizing their collection would be too unwieldy for one institution and with a desire to share their collection broadly, they developed The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: 50 Works for 50 States through the National Gallery in Washington, DC. Over the last few years, 50 works of art have been distributed to each of the 50 museums – one in each state. The University of Wyoming Art Museum was chosen as the Wyoming participant in the program.

The works included in the Art Museum’s collection are representative of the Vogels’ interest in Minimalist, Conceptualist, and post-1960s art, including artists such as Post-Minimalist Richard Tuttle (b. 1941), Abstract artist Gregory Amenoff (b. 1948), Minimalist Robert Mangold (b. 1937), and Funk Ceramicist David Gilhooly (b. 1943). The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States presents a snapshot of the Vogel’s collection through their gift to the University of Wyoming.

*Funded in part by the National Advisory Board of the UW Art Museum

The exhibition is organized by the Portland Art Museum and curated by Bruce Guenther, curator of modern and contemporary art. Gilkey Center programs are supported in part by the Vivian and Gordon Gilkey Endowment Fund.