Making & Meaning

On the occasion of the groundbreaking for the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center of Vassar College, a student publication posed the question, “What will the Loeb Art Center mean for Vassar?” This richly illustrated book considers responses to this question more than three decades later, on the thirtieth anniversary of the Loeb’s opening in 1993. Through an introductory essay on the history and role of the art museum at Vassar, a related timeline, sixty-eight catalogue entries on individual works of art, and ten essays focused on thematic groups of objects, this publication explores the Loeb and its predecessor, the Vassar College Art Gallery. This volume, co-published by Hirmer Publishers, reveals the dynamism and depth of the Loeb’s art collection, which spans from antiquity to the present day, and is evident in the variety of subjects covered by the book’s texts, whose authors include Vassar curators, faculty members, community partners, and art historians who studied at the College. Applying their varied expertise and perspectives to signature works from the Loeb, they critically examine the collection and its formation over time, as well as its relationship to teaching and learning on campus and beyond.