Film Screening - The Collector: Allan Stone’s Life in Art

Olympia Stone (PA ’87) will screen and discuss her film about her father, The Collector: Allan Stone’s Life in Art this Wednesday, January 30, 6:30 pm in Kemper Auditorium. All are welcome to attend.

The film explores the 50-year career of Allan Stone (PA ’50), a compulsive art collector and influential New York art dealer from the 1950s to 2006. Abandoning a law career in order to pursue his passion for art, Mr. Stone opened Allan Stone Gallery and committed himself to supporting young artists, including Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Joseph Cornell, and Eva Hesse, among others.

Known for his eclectic taste in art, Mr. Stone’s collection ranged from modern and contemporary art to African art to scavenged sculptures from buildings slated for demolition. Mr. Stone’s relentless thirst for discovery and obsessive collecting, both revealed in this film, show how one man became such an influential figure in the New York art scene and shared his passion for art with the world.

Amy Freedberg
Education Fellow

Storage Space, the Final Frontier

The Addison currently has 16,169 objects in its permanent collection. This is quite a bit more than the 600 we began with when the museum opened in 1931. At any one time we are able to put less than 1% of it on view on our gallery walls. The rest of it is kept in the museum’s highly-secured storage vaults as well as in storage space off site. As you can imagine, we’re running out of space.

When the Addison builds its new addition and renovates the existing building, we hope to solve that problem. Paintings are currently stored on movable screens (see right) and screen space is currently very tight. When we expand we will nearly double our screen space to accommodate our existing collections and provide some room for future acquisitions. Our works on paper, prints, and our extensive photography collections will be stored in file drawers on an expanded array of condensable storage systems. Our sculpture and decorative art collections, moved off site several years ago to expand staff office space within the museum, will finally be stored back in the Addison, also in condensable storage systems, with space to grow.

As the collections grow so should the museum in order to safely store and care for its artwork. Thankfully, our renovation and new addition will provide that which is most coveted by museums everywhere: space!


James M. Sousa
Associate Registrar for Collections and Archives

New Winter Shows Up Early!

It has been busier than usual here for the staff of the Addison over the last few weeks. Our Preparators and Registrars have been deinstalling and dispersing the artwork from our fall shows, our Education and Curatorial staff have been preparing for our new exhibitions, and our Development Office has been working hard on the Campaign for the Addison.

Luckily, two of our winter exhibitions, Stollerized and Winslow Homer: Land and Sea (see right), have been installed a week ahead of their official opening dates and The Discerning Eye: Five Perspectives on the Addison Collection has been extended for a couple of weeks to give our visitors plenty to view this weekend.

Over the next week, we'll begin installing Eye on the Collection: Views and Viewpoints and then, the following week, we'll begin installing our anchor winter exhibition, Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury, which will fill our entire second level. And of course, everything will be ready in time for our opening reception for all our winter exhibitions on February 15th at 5:30PM.

As this has all been happening, there was also one other Addison show closing, but not at the museum: I spent most of last week at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, working with their fabulous crew to close down the fifth and final venue of our traveling exhibition William Wegman: Funney/Strange nearly two years after it opened at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. It was definitely sad to see Wegman's work being put into their crates for their final trip home to their lenders. Thankfully, the artist has gifted us one of his Polaroid series from the show, Deposition (see left), for our permanent collection. Wegman's work will be appreciated here at the Addison long after the show has become a distant memory!

So be sure to visit us to see all our new exhibitions as soon as they are on the walls!


James M. Sousa
Associate Registrar for Collections and Archives