Museum Receives $100 Million Art Collection

By: Hilary Nangle

September 2007

WATERVILLE, MAINE—Late last spring, the Colby College Museum of Art received an art collection valued at approximately $100 million that includes a large concentration of James McNeill Whistler prints. “It’s the largest donation ever to Colby, let alone the museum,” says museum director Sharon Corwin. “It’s an extraordinarily generous gift that takes our museum to another level.”

Given by Peter H. and Paula Crane Lunder, the collection is comprised of more than 500 paintings, sculptures and prints, including 464 works by American masters, including John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt and Alex Katz.

The 201 Whistler prints and supporting materials represent the largest single collection of works by the artist given to an American academic museum. “The depth of the collection in terms of its Whistler is well-suited to our mission as a teaching institution, and it showcases his great range and virtuosity. The quality of some of the impressions is unparalleled,” Corwin says of the 201 prints and supporting materials.

More than 80 works included in the donation are currently on exhibit. That will increase to 200 works in 2009, when the museum celebrates its 50th anniversary. By 2013—when the museum expects a major portion of the gift to be in its possession—the 24,000-square-foot museum will open a new wing of approximately 10,000 square feet with galleries dedicated to the permanent display of works from the gift. With the expansion, Corwin says, the museum will have the largest exhibition space in Maine.