Vassar College’s Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center presents the exhibition Silver Linings: Celebrating the Spelman Art Collection, on view September 30, 2023–January 28, 2024.

The exhibition at the Loeb is the inaugural show in a five-stop, nationwide tour, made possible through the Art Bridges Foundation. Through the work of nearly 40 artists, Silver Linings uplifts the legacy of artists of African descent spanning the 20th Century through the contemporary moment, many of whom have been overlooked by mainstream art museums.

Spelman College is a historically Black liberal arts college for women located in Atlanta and began collecting art in 1899. Vassar, founded as a college for women which is now co-ed, was the first college or university to include an art collection as part of its original plan. Silver Linings highlights the parallels between the two colleges’ commitment to art, as Vassar will celebrate 160 years of collecting this academic year and the 30^th anniversary of the Loeb Art Center. Spelman has a similar history, with its long and distinguished legacy of collecting objects which ultimately resulted in the Spelman College Museum of Fine Arts, established 27 years ago. By presenting Silver Linings, the Loeb looks ahead to its own future as it focuses attention on work by women artists, artists of color, and other underrepresented artists. The exhibition will support ongoing discussions on campus surrounding representations of race, gender, sexuality, and more. In addition, it will help strengthen the Loeb’s long-term relationships with local artists and community groups. 

“We are honored to be the first stop for Silver Linings: Celebrating the Spelman Art Collection,” said Mary-Kay Lombino, Deputy Director and Emily Hargroves Fisher '57 and Richard B. Fisher Curator at The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College. “I had the privilege of experiencing the exhibition firsthand in Atlanta and was immediately struck by the strength and depth of the collection as well as the organic synergies between the histories of Spelman and Vassar, as well as the visions guiding both institutions today.”

The exhibition features important works by masters, pioneers and trailblazers who anchor the Spelman collection. The artworks are grouped in five sections: Spiral Group artists, Abstraction, Early Figuration, Contemporary Figuration, and Contemporary Photography.

Among the forty works in the exhibition there are sculptures by Beverly Buchanan, Selma Burke, and Elizabeth Catlett; paintings by Betty Blayton, Sam Gilliam, and Henry Ossawa Tanner; drawings by Herman “Kofi” Bailey, Nellie Mae Rowe, and Charles White; photographs by Amalia Amaki, Carrie Mae Weems, and Lorna Simpson; and mixed-media work by Emma Amos, Benny Andrews, and Romare Bearden. In addition, the following artists’ work is in the exhibition: Firelei Báez, Selma Burke, Floyd Coleman, Renée Cox, Myra Greene, Samella Lewis, Glenn Ligon, Howardena Pindell, Lucille Malkia Roberts, Deborah Roberts, Faith Ringgold, Lina Iris Viktor, and Hale Woodruff.

Silver Linings: Celebrating the Spelman Art Collection is organized by Spelman College Museum of Fine Arts, Atlanta, Georgia and curated by Liz Andrews and Karen Comer Lowe with initial contributions from Anne Collins Smith. Wall text and labels were written by Charmaine Branch, Vassar class of 2014. Generous support was provided by Art Bridges and the Friends of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center Exhibition Fund.

In addition to the exceptional works from the Spelman collection, the Loeb will offer satellite exhibitions from our own collection to provide context and amplify the Spelman works. Interwoven Histories: Prints by the Gee’s Bend Quilting Collective (September 9, 2023 – January 28, 2024), curated by Tenesha Carter Johnson, Spelman College, class of 2024 and Loeb Summer Curatorial Intern, presents a selection of prints made by members of the quilting collective from Boykin (otherwise known as “Gee’s Bend”), Alabama. The prints utilize the intricate and unique quilt-making designs and techniques taught through generations of women, many of whom are direct descendants of enslaved people. The Loeb acquired the three prints on view, as well as three others, in 2019 to mark the 50th anniversary of Vassar’s Africana Studies Program.

Kara Walker’s Testimony, on display in the Hoene Hoy Photo Gallery (September 30 – December 22), features five stills from Walker’s silent 16mm film, Testimony: Narrative of a Negress Burdened by Good Intentions (2004), in which her silhouettes come eerily to life. The figures are manipulated as shadow puppets, the hands of their puppet master often in full view. Silver Linings features several contemporary photographers who speak to themes related to Walker’s work.

First established as the Vassar College Art Gallery (now the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center), the museum has a distinct collection of artworks spanning geography, time, and medium, with depth and strength in photography. Due in large part to an exceptional art history program—its reputation built over the years by faculty including Agnes Rindge Claflin and Linda Nochlin—many singularly important works in the collection were given by alumnae art collectors. Throughout Vassar’s history and continuing after the college became co-educational in 1969, it has been known as a place where young women cultivate intellectual independence. Exhibitions of work by women artists have been a particular focus in the last decade, featuring solo shows on Vassar alumna Nancy Graves (2011), Julie Mehretu (2012), Helen Frankenthaler (2017), Inez Nathaniel Walker (2019), Louise Bourgeois (2020), and Violet Oakley (2021), as well as a major collection exhibition Women Picturing Women: From Personal Spaces to Public Ventures (2021).

About the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center

The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center is a teaching and learning museum, free and open to all, supporting the College’s educational mission and communities. Formerly the Vassar College Art Gallery, the Loeb is the first art museum at a college or university that was part of the institution’s original plan. Today, the permanent collection includes over 22,000 works, comprised of paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, textiles, and glass and ceramic wares. The Loeb strives to be a catalyst for scholarly, creative, and social justice work by Vassar students and others. It aims to reflect a commitment to broaden, and amplify, the voices represented in the museum setting, and to ensure that the Loeb’s programs and practices have a positive impact on campus and beyond. To learn more, please visit vassar.edu/theloeb or follow @theloeb on Instagram.

About Art Bridges

The vision of philanthropist and arts patron Alice Walton, Art Bridges has been creating and supporting programs that expand access to American art in all regions across the nation. Created in 2017, the foundation strives to bring great works of American art out of storage and into communities. Art Bridges partners with a growing network of nearly 130 museums of all sizes and locations, providing financial and strategic support for exhibition development, collection loans and programs designed to engage new audiences. Art Bridges funds projects that inspire deeper relationships between arts organizations and their communities, develop expanded relationships built on inclusivity and respect, and encourage meaningful personal connections that lead to stronger, more vibrant cities and towns. To learn more about Art Bridges, follow on social platforms @artbridgesfoundation and visit www.artbridgesfoundation.org. 

Loeb Commitment to DEAI

The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College commits to Diversity, Equity, Access, and Inclusion (DEAI) as core values across its culture, systems, and practices. We pledge to allocate resources (human and financial) to create and sustain a museum culture in which difference is celebrated. The Loeb staff is dedicated to integrating DEAI priorities into gallery installations, programming, interpretation, collections management, acquisitions, and internal processes. Our ongoing work is guided by an intention to care for all people engaged with the Loeb while welcoming the exchange of ideas, enriching experiences, and diverse perspectives through art.

Admission to the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center is free and all galleries are wheelchair accessible. The Loeb is now open to the public every day (except Monday) from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. The Loeb is located at 124 Raymond Avenue near the entrance to the Vassar College campus. parking is available on Raymond Avenue. Directions to the Vassar campus in Poughkeepsie, NY, are available at vassar.edu/visit.

The Art Center is also accessible via the Dutchess County Public Transit, Bus Route L. For additional information, the public may call (845) 437-5632 or visit vassar.edu/theloeb.

Vassar Land Acknowledgement

We acknowledge that Vassar stands upon the homelands of the Munsee Lenape, Indigenous peoples who have an enduring connection to this place despite being forcibly displaced by European colonization. Munsee Lenape peoples continue today as the Stockbridge-Munsee Community in Wisconsin, the Delaware Tribe and the Delaware Nation in Oklahoma, and the Munsee-Delaware Nation in Ontario. This acknowledgment, however, is insufficient without our reckoning with the reality that every member of the Vassar community since 1861 has benefited from these Native peoples’ displacement, and it is hollow without our efforts to counter the effects of structures that have long enabled—and that still perpetuate—injustice against Indigenous Americans. To that end, we commit to build and sustain relationships with Native communities; to expand opportunities at Vassar for Native students, as well as Native faculty and other employees; and to collaborate with Native nations to know better the Indigenous peoples, past and present, who care for this land. 

Vassar College is a coeducational, independent, residential liberal arts college founded in 1861.

Contact: Alison Hendrie, ahendrie1@vassar.edu, (914) 450-3340