The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Ohio

The remarkable story of Dorothy and Herbert Vogel has become the stuff of lore. A Manhattan postal clerk and a reference librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library, the couple began collecting art shortly after marrying in 1962. Together they purchased thousands of artworks, cramming their one-bedroom Manhattan apartment floor to ceiling with art. These unlikely collectors concentrated their acquisitions on emerging art forms, works from a wide range of genres including minimal and conceptual art as well as expressionistic. Because the Vogels only purchased art that would fit in their apartment, most of the works are intimate in scale. In 1992, the Vogels decided to gift most of their collection to the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. The sheer size of the gift, which included 2,500 drawings, paintings, objects, prints and photographs by 177 artists, led to the development of a program in which the National Gallery would distribute 50 works from the collection to one institution in each of the fifty states. The Akron Art Museum is thrilled to be the Ohio recipient of The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States gift. Akron’s Vogel collection includes paintings, drawings, prints and sculpture by 26 artists. Many including Nam June Paik, Richard Tuttle, Lynda Benglis and Edda Renouf, have achieved international acclaim since the Vogels began collecting their work. The intimate scale of many of the artworks invites close looking. Twelve of Richard Tuttle’s subtle but poetic and lyrical watercolor paintings on sheets of notebook paper will be among the many captivating works on view. This exhibition is organized by the Akron Art Museum and sponsored by a generous gift from The Welty Family Foundation and the Kenneth L. Calhoun Charitable Trust, Key Bank, Trustee.