James Gobel

Fifty Gifts for Fifty Years

Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, Nebraska (July 15 – September 15, 2013)

This exhibition celebrates the Sheldon Museum of Art’s dedicated community of collectors and donors in Lincoln, across the state of Nebraska, and around the nation and marks the completion of a two-year campaign to acquire fifty works of art to commemorate the museum’s golden anniversary. Surpassing its initial goal, the project succeeded thanks to the generosity of patrons who contributed important pieces in a wide range of media—all of them remarkable additions to the Sheldon’s renowned collection of American art.
The exhibition explores not only the objects themselves, but also the lives and interests of the extraordinary collectors and patrons who made their acquisition possible. The diversity of gifts is dazzling: works by nineteenth-century masters such as George Caleb Bingham appear alongside those by twentieth-century giants including Elizabeth Catlett, John Steuart Curry, and John Marin, and contemporary luminaries like Viola Frey, James Gobel, Richard Hunt, and Jun Kaneko. Seminal pieces by Carol Haerer, Weldon Kees, and Charles Rain—artists with Nebraska connections—enhance the museum’s already substantial holdings of their work.

Support for this exhibition comes from the Ethel S. Abbott Charitable Foundation Exhibition and Programs Fund, the Sheldon Art Association, the Nebraska Arts Council, and the Nebraska Cultural Endowment.

Generous support for the catalog was provided by the Lincoln Community Foundation on behalf of the Jane Hines Endowed Fund.