Vogel 50x50

In 2008, the Hood Museum of Art was selected as the New Hampshire museum recipient of fifty works from the Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection. Dorothy and Herbert Vogel are somewhat unusual art collectors. Now retired, Herb worked for the U.S. Post Office and Dorothy was a librarian. After their marriage in 1962, they developed a deep interest in the New York contemporary art scene. They began collecting and, using only their civil servants' salaries, acquired over four thousand objects. The Vogels befriended many young artists, many at the beginnings of their careers, and often purchased works on paper in order to store them more easily in their modest apartment. Their collection is strong in minimal and conceptual art, especially drawings, but moves beyond those categories. Much of the Vogels' collection was given to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., but in 2007 they decided to distribute 2,500 works nationally. Dubbed the "50X50 project," they donated fifty works to one institution in each state. The Hood Museum of Art was honored to be the New Hampshire institution designated to receive this important gift.

The Hood is marking the Vogels' gift with the exhibition The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States: New Hampshire, which includes artists such as Richard Nonas, Robert Berry, and Lynda Benglis. Much of the Hood's gift consists of works on paper, including a small abstraction in graphite and silver paint by Michelle Stuart titled July, New Hampshire. Intimate pastels by Edda Renouf seem to glow gently, while curved hills undulate in Bill Jensen's gouache Terra Firma. Much of the work is done on sketchpad paper, giving it an informal feel. The gift includes two groups of works, the first a bound book of forty-three drawings by Jene Highstein, done in a spare minimalist style, and the second a series of delicate watercolors on lined notebook paper by seminal postminimalist Richard Tuttle. In contrast to these are two lively collages from Stephen Antonakos's Travel Collage series and a figurative painting by John Clem Clarke, an artist known for his pop art imagery, painted with a photo-realistic technique.

The Hood Museum of Art, The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States, a joint initiative of the Trustees of the Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection and the National Gallery of Art, with generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

The presentation of this exhibition at the Hood Museum of Art has been generously funded by the Harrington Gallery Fund.

The RISD Museum celebrates the generosity and vision of contemporary art collectors Dorothy and Herbert Vogel, who gave the Museum a large art donation as part of their Fifty Works for Fifty States project.

Their gift includes paintings and sculptures by Cheryl Laemmle, Wendy Lehman, Don Hazlitt, Alan Shields, and Charles Clough. Joel Shapiro’s exceptional Model for Two Houses is the first work by this renowned sculptor to enter the Museum’s collection. The Vogels’ gift also encompasses works on paper by Robert Barry, Lynda Benglis, Nam June Paik, and Edda Renouf.

The Vogels, a postal clerk and a librarian, built one of the world’s finest contemporary art collections in their small Manhattan apartment, using Herb’s income to acquire more than 4,000 works over a span of 50 years. Called “thoroughly modest Medicis” (The Telegraph, UK), the couple sought out and encouraged relatively unknown artists who would later receive international acclaim, including Sol LeWitt, Richard Tuttle, and Christo. When their collection outgrew their one-bedroom apartment, the Vogels looked to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, where about 1,100 works have been gifted. But its sheer size—far too large for any one institution—led the Vogels and the National Gallery, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences, to also give 50 works of art to one institution in every state, making this one of the largest and the most significant philanthropic projects in American art history.

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