“The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Wyoming” will be exhibited in its entirety for the first time from Feb. 9 until March of 2020 in the University of Wyoming Art Museum.
With the help of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Dorothy and Herbert Vogel launched the national gift program, “Fifty Works for Fifty States,” in 2008. The program has distributed 2,500 works from the Vogel’s collection throughout the nation. Fifty of the Vogel’s pieces were to go to selected institutions in each of the 50 states.
Selected as the Wyoming designee, the UW Art Museum celebrates the extraordinary gift and honor to the state. The works in the collection represent the Vogels’ interest in minimalism, conceptualist and post-1960s art. A selection of pieces was exhibited in 2011.
“We are the only academic art museum in the state and the only four-year university,” Nicole Crawford, chief curator at the UW Art Museum, said about being selected. “We have a professional staff, we’re accredited, we have a rigorous exhibition program, and do academic engagement, so I think all that was the process of being chosen.”
The Vogels began to accumulate their vast and uniquely perceptive collection after getting married at the beginning of 1962, encompassing over 4,000 works of contemporary art.
Living as a postal clerk and librarian and finding home in a small apartment, the Vogels befriended many young artists and often purchased works on paper in order to store pieces easily in their small space. Well-known artist Richard Tuttle was among these friends the Vogels acquired over the years.
“Part of our theme for this academic year was focusing on collectors, so this fulfills that role because a large part of this exhibition is about the Vogels and how they collected and what they collected,” Crawford said. “The other part of it is it’s not typical work that you would see here, it’s a little harder to understand, it’s going to take time to look at it, it’s more conceptual art.”
Two documentaries about the Vogels and their collection will be screened in conjunction with the exhibition. “Herb & Dorothy” will be showing Feb. 28, from 6-8 p.m. and “Herb & Dorothy 50×50” will be screened later this year. Screenings are free and open to the public.
The exhibit is 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 UW Art Museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. with Thursday hours extended to 7 p.m. Admission is free. For more information, call the UW Art Museum at (307) 766-6622 or visit www.uwyo.edu/artmuseum.
