night and day art collection

This was one of the most telling slides in the "Collecting Impressionism: Telfair's Modern Vision" members-only lecture this evening.
My many thanks to the speaker, Telfair Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs Courtney McNeil, and her love for this genre of art.
She had designed this slide to accentuate the difference in the museum purchases made by two very different directors.
The first, Carl Brandt, was also the first director of the Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences. He collected those pieces shown on the left, all of which could be termed classics from the masters, pieces which a museum would be expected to have. In other words, he stayed with the safe bets.
The second, Gari Melchers, was nearly two generations younger and born in the United States. After wedding a Southern lass, he was enticed to become the next director for the Telfair. His aim was to bring in much more current works, many by his contemporaries. In other words, he selected works that would be more valued in the future.
Even then, the value of Melchers' choices were noticed by the critics.
"Away down here in Savannah there is someone buying better paintings for a little museum than the heads of many of the big museums in the country have had sense enough or courage enough to buy."
So wrote Julian Street, in 1917, about the art Melchers had added in a decade.
The event was definitely worth my venturing out on this rainy, rainy, rainy day.

At the reception, I searched above for the unicorn in the katniss, but it had wandered off, perhaps looking
to find an ark.
(smile)
I had a nice laugh at that joke with Elaine and Ed, retiree transplants.
She was a librarian, him a math professor up north.
I look forward to seeing them again.
And I'll look forward to seeing Sue Gorecki again tomorrow, right here at the Jepson!
So very glad she was here!
i thank You, God!