Hillsdale College has a growing permanent art collection with no permanent home. This is a blot on the college’s liberal arts reputation that can only be resolved by building a gallery for the collection.
Although the collection is not large, it includes a wide breadth of artworks from different times and cultures — everything from duplicates of ancient Greek statuary to a series of Stonehenge paintings by acclaimed contemporary American artist Brian Curtis. Just last year, the college acquired the collection’s most notable work, a portrait called “Ernesta,” by internationally acclaimed American Victorian painter Cecilia Beaux (1855-1942).
“Ernesta” served as the centerpiece for the gallery’s most recent exhibit, “Enduring Visions: Selections from the College Permanent Art Collection,” the college’s effort to display notable art pieces from professional painters that it has acquired over the years.
Of all the artworks, “Ernesta” makes the strongest case for providing the collection with a permanent gallery. A historical oddity, it was once part of a painting that once stood six feet tall until it was mysteriously cut into the two pieces the college now has in storage: “Ernesta” and “Ernesta’s Shoes.”
Beaux painted these works in the “grand manner,” a style that relies on dramatic brushstrokes to convey emotion. Her contemporary, William Merritt Chase, one of the foremost portrait artists in the American Victorian art scene, once remarked that Beaux was “the greatest woman painter of our age.” Later art critics and gallery curators must have agreed with him: Beaux’s portraits are now exhibited alongside Chase’s paintings and works from other well-regarded Victorian painters like John Singer Sargent and James McNeill Whistler in the American wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C.
During the run of “Enduring Visions,” the Sage Center gallery made “Ernesta” and the other artworks in the collection easily accessible to the student population. But as soon as the exhibit ended, the artworks were scattered throughout campus. Some went into storage in the Sage Center. Others ended up abandoned on the dim walls or bathed with a fluorescent sheen in some corner of Moss Hall. In either event, none of these art pieces are receiving the recognition they rightly deserve.
The college’s art collection should not be so neglected, especially after Professor of Art Sam Knecht said to the Collegian that one purpose of “Enduring Visions” was to be “an encouragement to the visitor that the college is interested in enhancing its permanent art collection.” The permanent art collection’s current disarray suggests to the casual visitor that right now, Hillsdale is not working toward this goal.
Without a permanent gallery for the permanent collection, the college misses an opportunity to help students grow in their appreciation for art and also makes it difficult to acquire more art for students to appreciate. The lack of a permanent art gallery sends a negative message to art donors about Hillsdale’s interest in securing a top-tier art collection. In the case of “Ernesta,” the only reason the college received the painting is that the donor, Anne Natvig, has been interested in Hillsdale College for decades and trusted the college would take care of it. With anyone else, Hillsdale may not have been so fortunate.
Although the Sage Center gallery functions well as a place where students and faculty members alike can exhibit their work temporarily for the whole campus, the transience of each exhibit prevents the art gallery from displaying our permanent collection’s beauty.
After all, art’s primary aim, unlike other facets of the liberal arts, is the beautiful. By channeling the beautiful, art injects vigor into the sterility of pure knowledge. Without it, we risk falling into a drab and Puritanical outlook on the liberal arts.
The solution here is simple. The college has a beautiful art collection. The school claims to be interested in expanding it. Why not give it a permanent home so that students, faculty, townspeople — everyone who visits Hillsdale College — can enjoy its beauty whenever they please?
