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The Art Institute of Chicago's already impressive collection of prints and drawings took a significant leap forward today with the announcement of several gifts and acquisitions.
Among the most impressive will be the donation of at least 90 Old Master drawings by Italian Renaissance and Baroque artists including Raphael, Titian and Guido Reni. Jean Goldman, a member of the faculty at the School of the Art Institute, and her husband, Chicago attorney Steven Goldman, are promising the works.
Their donation will join a collection of 41 drawings by Paul Gauguin, also donated to the museum today by Art Institute Trustee Edward McCormick Blair Sr., which museum officials say is the largest gift of Gauguin drawings ever to an American museum.
Other gifts announced today include 30 works on paper by post-war and contemporary German artists, donated by real estate developer and arts patron Lewis Manilow and his wife, Susan.
James Wood, the Art Institute's president and director, says the value of the multi-million dollar addition to the museum's 80,000-piece collection of prints and drawings cannot be accurately estimated without putting all the new pieces up for auction. "But it is safe to say we couldn't afford to buy these gifts," he says.
The new works, many of which will rotate in and out of the museum's permanent collection, will be housed in the new Jean and Steven Goldman Study Center in the prints and drawings department, which opened today after a renovation made possible by a $5-million gift from the couple.
At a press conference announcing the new works and the opening of the center, Mr. Wood said the new facility will provide the latest technology in restoration and conservation as well as enhanced opportunities for the public to view the drawing and prints collection.
"We now have a small museum within a larger museum," he said.
Mr. Wood also announced a $12-million gift from Chicago's Regenstein Foundation, $8 million of which will be set aside as an endowed acquisition fund for the purchase of Old Master drawings. The first purchase from the fund was Jean Antoine Watteau's "Studies of a Dancer, Raising her Skirt in Her Two Hands."
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