Las Vegas Art Museum makes it official: Will get 50 works from national gift program

By Kristen Peterson

Friday, Oct. 10, 2008 | 12:01 a.m.

The Las Vegas Art Museum is officially announcing that it will receive 50 artworks from the Herbert and Dorothy Vogel collection as part of a national gift program initiated by the Vogels and the National Gallery of Art.

Fifty Works for Fifty States distributes 2,500 contemporary works throughout the country, giving 50 works to an institution in every state. The Las Vegas Art Museum will receive works by Werner, Edward Renouf, F.L. Schröder, Larry Zox, among others.

As reported last month, Libby Lumpkin, executive director of the Las Vegas Art Museum, said the museum is honored to have been selected. "I have been an admirer of the Vogels and their collection for many, many years. They are the quintessential example of how you can be a collector without having an enormous amount of money. They got to know the artists and the gallerists. They followed their instincts. And they had great instincts."

Lumpkin says in a recent press release that the gift "greatly enhances" the museum's permanent collection. "We are delighted to have been singled out not only by the Vogels, but also by the National Gallery of Art, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

The Vogels, a New York couple, started collecting art in the early 1960s. They did not come from wealth. He was a postal worker and she was a librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library. They focused on emerging artists, attended gallery openings and built up a collection of 4,000 works.

The couple donated more than 800 works to the National Gallery of Art and promised another 268. The couple began donating and selling works to the museum in 1991.

The Las Vegas Art Museum will show the works in an exhibit that opens April 17.