Vogel 50x50

This exhibition celebrates a recent gift of art from the renowned collection of Dorothy and Herbert Vogel. Starting in the 1960s, the couple amassed an outstanding collection of more than 4,000 works, staying within a modest budget (he was a postal clerk and she was a librarian) and extraordinary space constraints (a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan). While they are particularly known for collecting the minimal and conceptual art of Sol LeWitt, Richard Tuttle, and Robert Barry, the Vogels also collected a wide range of post-minimal, figurative, and expressionist work produced between the 1960s and the 1990s.

Fifty Works for the First State is made possible, in part, by grants from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support is provided by the Emily du Pont Memorial Exhibition Fund and a group of the Delaware Art Museum’s individual donors and Members.

The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection is notable both for the character and breadth of the objects and for 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. Setting their collecting priorities above those of 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. The couple began collecting in the early 1960s, with a focus on minimal and conceptual art, though they also embraced a wide range of post-minimal practices as well as new figurative directions that emerged in the 1980s. 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—artists like Robert Barry, Edda Renouf, and Richard Tuttle, among many others—who went on to achieve considerable acclaim. Many works in the collection were given to the Vogels as gifts, a testament to the Vogels’ close and longstanding relationships with many of the artists they supported. The exhibition is drawn from the Vogels’ recent gift of fifty works to the Museum of Art, donated as part of The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States, a national initiative to place fifty works from the collection in a selected art institution in each of the fifty states.

This exhibition is made possible in part by the Friends of the University of Michigan Museum of Art.

The Albright-Knox Art Gallery is honored to become a chapter in the story of Dorothy and Herbert Vogel, whose generosity brings to the Permanent Collection a bevy of artists that are either entering the collection for the first time or will enhance existing holdings. This exhibition will premiere and present this magnanimous gift in total, which includes works by Richard Artschwager, Robert Barry, Lynda Benglis, Charles Clough, Koki Doktori, R. M. Fischer, Richard Francisco, Don Hazlitt, Gene Highstein, Bill Jensen, Tobi Kahn, Steve Keister, Alain Kirlli, Mark Kostabi, Wendy Lehman, Michael Lucero, Joseph Nechvatal, Richard Nonas, Larry Poons, Lucio Pozzi, Edda Renouf, Judy Rifka, Barbara Schwartz, Darryl Trivieri, and Richard Tuttle.

The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: 50 Works for 50 States October 22, 2009 - January 17, 2010.

This exhibition presents the gift to the Columbia Museum of Art of 50 works of art from New York collectors Dorothy and Herbert Vogel, with the help of the National Gallery of Art, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The gifts are part of a national gifts program entitled The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: 50 Works for 50 States. The 50 works are minimal and conceptual art, some of which also explore numerous directions of the post-minimalist period, including works of a figurative and expressionist nature.

Since the 1960s a wide range of artists—including Andy Warhol, Richard Prince, and Ellen Gallagher—have made pictures that reference specific works of art and popular culture. Displaying these paintings, prints, and photographs alongside images of their sources, Exposed! explores artistic strategies of quotation and appropriation. The featured works present various relationships to their sources, from respectful homage to cultural critique. The exhibition includes works of art by Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Prince, Jeff Koons, Robert Colescott, Grace Hartigan, Ellen Gallagher, and Glenn Ligon, among others. Some pieces are from the Delaware Art Museum’s collection, and some are on loan from private collections.