WATERVILLE, ME.- Gabriella De Ferrari, a distinguished curator, art historian, and writer, served as the founding chair of the Colby College Museum of Art’s Board of Governors. She has also been instrumental in developing the museum’s contemporary collection, helping to establish a thriving program for the support and study of new art. In recognition of the honorary Doctor of Letters bestowed by Colby College upon Gabriella De Ferrari on May 25, 2008, this exhibition presents a selection of works that became part of the collection through her vision, guidance, and generosity.

Gabriella De Ferrari. Novelist, curator, collector, arts leader, mother. Born in Peru, she received herr undergraduate degree in marketing and economics from Saint Louis University and graduate degrees from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University and from Harvard University. She has had a distinguished career leading art museums, serving as curator and director for some of the most respected art institutions in the nation, including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and the Busch-Reisinger Museum and the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard. In 1994 she became the founding chair of the Colby College Museum of Art’s Board of Governors. Under her leadership, the museum’s collection saw remarkable growth, adding major works by Sol LeWitt, Terry Winters, and Richard Serra, to name just a few. She is a dear friend to many artists, and she is greatly admired for her intelligence about and passion for art. Art, for her, is something to be shared, be it her extraordinary collection of drawings and prints or in her work as philanthropic advisor to the chairman and CEO of United Technologies, a position through which she created a highly successful public art program that commissioned original works of art for display in New York, Boston, and Hartford. She is also an accomplished author of numerous essays, novels, and an acclaimed memoir, Gringa Latina: A Woman of Two Worlds.