UW Art Museums Vogel Collection to be Exhibited in Entirety for First Time

For the first time, the University of Wyoming Art Museum’s collection of works from the Dorothy and Herbert Vogel national gift program, “Fifty Works for Fifty States,” will be exhibited in its entirety from Feb. 9, 2019-March 21, 2020.

The exhibition is titled “The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Wyoming.”

In 2008, with the help of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Vogels launched the national gift program, “Fifty Works for Fifty States,” which distributed 2,500 works from the Vogels’ collection throughout the nation, with 50 works going to a selected institution in each of the 50 states.

The UW Art Museum was selected as the Wyoming designee, and the exhibition celebrates this extraordinary gift to Wyoming. The works included in the UW Art Museum’s collection are representations of the Vogels’ interest in minimalist, conceptualist and post-1960s art. This is the first time this collection has been shown in its entirety at the UW Art Museum; a selection was exhibited in 2011.

Public film screenings of two documentaries about the Vogels and their collection are planned in conjunction with the exhibition. The first screening is “Herb & Dorothy” Thursday, Feb. 28, from 6-8 p.m. A second film, “Herb & Dorothy 50x50,” will be screened later this year. Screenings are free and open to the public.

“The Vogels are wonderful examples of the impact art lovers can make in building a collection, even on a limited budget,” says Marianne Eileen Wardle, director of the UW Art Museum. “We’re lucky to have these exciting works here. It will be wonderful to have them on view for so long, and I hope that people will return again and again. Maybe visitors can take inspiration from the Vogels and start collecting for themselves.”

“The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States” is a joint initiative of the Trustees of the Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection and the National Gallery of Art, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

For more information, call the UW Art Museum at (307) 766-6622, visit the website at www.uwyo.edu/artmuseum, or follow the museum on Facebook and Instagram.

Through its “Museum as Classroom” approach, the UW Art Museum places art at the center of learning for all ages. Located in the Centennial Complex at 2111 E. Willett Drive in Laramie, the museum is open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Thursday hours are extended to 7 p.m. Admission is free.

About the Vogel Collection

Beginning in 1962, Dorothy and Herbert Vogel used their modest income as a postal clerk and librarian to amass a vast and uniquely perceptive collection encompassing over 4,000 works of contemporary art. The Vogels befriended many young artists -- several at the beginning of their careers -- and often purchased works on paper in order to store them more easily in their small apartment. The strengths of the collection include minimal and conceptual art, especially drawings, but also moves beyond those categories to highlight post-1960s developments in art.