Gift/Deeds: Collectors at PAFA

This focused installation featuring 20th century and contemporary art from the permanent collection highlights selections from six significant art collections. Each of the collections on view were gifted to the museum by private collectors who served artists and arts institutions: collecting artwork guided by their intellectual interests, activist impulses and their passions, and giving the art to the Museum to ensure its long-term care, preservation, and display for future audiences. For these collectors, loving the art and giving it away was a series of good deeds, ensuring a much wider public could enjoy the art than if it remained in their possession. Across six galleries, visitors will see collectors committed to adventurous approaches to the figure, to the medium of print, to the most celebrated names in American art, or to artists overlooked by mainstream canons. Come and explore how the generosity of these collectors helps to build the collection at PAFA and expands the stories we tell about American Art.

The installation will unfold in the galleries of PAFA's Historic Landmark Building throughout the summer of 2022.

• The Robert and Frances Coulborn Kohler Collection opens May 20
• The Ofelia Garcia Collection opens June 30
• The Vivian O. and Meyer P. Potamkin Collection opens August 4
• The Bernice McIlhenny Wintersteen Collection opens August 11
• Sculpture from the Linda Lee Alter Collection of Art by Women opens August 25
• Abstraction in the Harold A. and Ann R. Sorgenti Collection of Contemporary African American Art opens August 25

With gratitude to Linda Lee Alter, Ofelia Garcia, Robert and Frances Coulborn Kohler, Vivian O. and Meyer P. Potamkin, Harold A. and Ann R. Sorgenti, and Bernice McIlhenny Wintersteen. 

Banner image credit: Luis Cruz Azaceta (b. 1942), Self-Portrait with Phony Hat, 1980, Colored ink and pencils on paper, Robert and Frances Coulborn Kohler Collection, 2013.10.2.