Sheldon Museum of Art
Date of this Version
1970
Citation
THE SHELDON MEMORIAL ART GALLERY, January 20 through February 15, 1970.
Abstract
INTRODUCTION :
The exhibition of works of art selected from the collection of Olga Sheldon is an event of particular pleasure for those of us associated with the Sheldon Gallery. For the first time we have an opportunity to demonstrate that Mrs. Sheldon, aside from being one of the Gallery's best friends, is also a person who truly loves art and artists and who finds a major satisfaction in knowing and sharing their works and personalities. While, on the one hand, she has secured for the gallery collection a number of major works which otherwise might never have been ours, she has also acquired for her own pleasure a houseful of art objects of the most varied sort, all of them marked by the quality of being good to live with. Her walls accommodate a Picasso and a Villon along with works by artists whose names would be largely unknown outside Nebraska. Her eye and taste respond to the creative impulse in its simplest sense: they have none of the attendant calculations of historicism, status seeking or speculative investment.
The writer can speak with all possible warmth of pleasure afforded by Mrs. Sheldon's company on any number of art safaris. It has been a rewarding experience to have the invaluable check of her response to any given object under consideration, which, it must be said, has not invariably seconded my own.
At the same time it is clear what a remarkable response to the larger problems of museum acquisition is contained in the paintings and sculpture acquired for eventual gift to the Gallery collection. What museum in the world would not be forever grateful for the single gift of such a masterpiece as Brancusi's "Princess X"? In addition she has given a dozen works ranging from Ralph Blakelock to Red Grooms, to enhance and extend the collections of the University and the Nebraska Art Association.
Comments
Copyright 1970 Sheldon Museum of Art.