The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center was founded in 1864 as the Vassar College Art Gallery. Vassar was the first college or university in the country to include an art museum as part of its original plan. The current 36,000 square foot facility was designed by Cesar Pelli and named in honor of the new building’s primary donor Frances Lehman Loeb, a member of the Class of 1928.
The Loeb’s collections chart the history of art from antiquity to the present and comprise over 22,000 works, including paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, textiles, and glass and ceramic wares. Teaching students and working as an important tangible complement to the curriculum is the main focus of the collection. Notable holdings include the Warburg Collection of Old Master prints, an important group of Hudson River School paintings given by Matthew Vassar at the college’s inception, and a wide range of works by major European and American twentieth century painters.
Mission Statement
The mission of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center is to enhance and support the College’s goals of leadership, scholarship, and integrative learning. The Art Center achieves this through the preservation, documentation, interpretation, presentation, and development of its collections; and through a dynamic program of temporary exhibitions and educational activities aimed at diverse audiences.
Learn more about the Loeb Art Center at Vassar College here.
Find the Loeb’s virtual exhibitions of photography here.
52 archival inkjet prints on Canson Infinity Platine Fibre Rag, Portfolio design by John DeMerritt Bookbinding,
Emeryville, California, 2015, Purchase, Advisory Council for Photography, 2015.17.1.1–52
