Beyond NYC: The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Beautiful Dutchess County, NY
The picturesque campus of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY houses an inviting and intimate Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center which serves as an art education lab for students and faculty and an exhibition venue for the public. The center is holding insightful exposés from its collection rotating the focus from American Contemporary Art to Northern European Renaissance to Abstract Impressionism. A visit to the art center organically fits in with pensive nature walks and visits to the historic sites in Hudson Valley.
The Northern European Art 1500–1700 exhibition is celebrating the career of Susan Donahue Kuretsky, Vassar College Class of 1963 and Professor of Art who taught at Vassar for forty years. The exhibition will be on view from April 27 — September 2, 2018 and is free.
The exhibition includes the prints and engravings by Dutch, Flemish and German masters covering a time span from 1500 to 1700. The galleries in the exhibition are organized by the date of acquisition of the work by the center. Those acquisitions include such great names as Durer, Rembrandt, Brueghel the Elder, Leyden, Hall and many others.
Art education at Vassar is well known for its tradition of bringing the original art to the classroom. The current exhibit is even titled as Master Class. From the mid-19th century, the students were encouraged to see the art up close while learning to appreciate it and to ensure a continuity of humanity’s progress.
In the years after the Nazi rise and the start of WWII in Europe, Vassar College, as well as many other institutions of higher education in the US, had experienced the arrival of new faculties from Germany, Austria and other European countries who emigrated to the US to escape the persecution. This wave of art historians introduced extensive scholarship of the Northern European art to the Vassar community. Their expertise was complemented by the efforts to secure the funding for bringing in original drawings and prints which was and still is all to essential for the forward-looking educational process.
The visitors to the Frances Lehman Loeb Art center will have a chance to get intimate with the top examples of craftsmanship created at the high point of Northern renaissance history.
While at the center, the rest of the permanent collection is surely worth spending time with. Here you will see a well put together sample of works from various artistic movements. The Art Center galleries feature approximately 350 works in its collection from antiquities to the present. The collection had started from 3,000 works of primarily European and American paintings and drawings and now had grown to 19,000 works covering all time periods and cultures.
A visit to Dutchess County will not be complete without getting in touch with the art and the Art Center at Vassar is an excellent place for it.
While you are in Poughkeepsie, NY plan to visit a newly build Walkway over Hudson River. This pedestrian bridge was opened in 2009 and is a perfect point to get a bird’s eye view of the mighty Hudson with the Catskill Mountains in the background. Enjoy the 1.2 miles span of the bridge on foot, bike or rollerblade. Just a little north of Poughkeepsie in Hyde Park, NY you can find the historical sites of Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum and Vanderbilt Mansion. Visit Dutchess County Tourism site to get a Great Estate Pass to see the sites.
Dates: April 27 — September 2, 2018
Venue: Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, 124 Raymond Ave, Poughkeepsie, NY 12603
Originally published at www.arts-ny.com on May 15, 2018.