In 1922, Western's President Dwight B. Waldo announced that Albert May Todd would donate valuable books and prized paintings to decorate North Hall's library and reading room. That gift marked the beginning of the WMU Art Collection and set in motion the idea of "art for all." Todd's art collection forms the nexus of the collection that celebrates its 100th year this fall with an exhibit of 82 works at the Richmond Center for Visual Arts. Director of Exhibits Indra Lācis talks about the exhibit called "We've Only Just Begun: Celebrating a Century of Collecting Art at Western Michigan University.”
“What’s particularly exciting about bringing together the University art collection into one space,” says Lācis. “Because it’s typically spread across the campus in 52 buildings.”
The exhibit brings together a range of media from diverse geographic areas, time periods and styles, highlighting major artistic movements. The exhibition includes examples of American Impressionism, European Neoclassicism and Romanticism, Japanese and Chinese ceramics, Art of Asian and African origin, 20th-century Modernism, as well as Pop art and a range of painting and printmaking after World War II.
“This exhibition isn’t necessarily a best of the best of everything we have in the collection,” Lācis says. “It’s intended to show the breadth and the scope of the collection and the diversity of the work that we have. In that sense, it is encyclopedic … it is very different from most collections that live in storage spaces and exhibition halls. I hope that it’s a moment that we can start a larger conversation about the University art collection, because it is an incredible asset. As cherished and beloved as it is, I think that many of us on campus, including myself to some degree, haven’t been aware of what it is until you start looking at it.”
The exhibit is free and open to the public through November 19 at the Richmond Center for the Visual Arts.
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