WILMINGTON, DE.- The Delaware Art Museum presents Gifted: Recent Additions to the Permanent Collection, an exhibition featuring more than 30 works of art given to the Delaware Art Museum since its reopening in June 2005, on view July 12, 2008 – November 9, 2008. Paintings, prints, photographs, sculptures, and ceramics—including works from the Dorothy and Herbert Vogel collection—will be featured. Gifted offers visitors a glimpse into how the Museum’s collection grows through the generosity of collectors.

Like most art museums, the Delaware Art Museum has acquired most of its permanent collection through gifts. The Museum’s collection has been shaped by the interests of its donors, including Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft, collectors of Pre-Raphaelite art, and Helen Farr Sloan, the widow of American painter and illustrator John Sloan. Some recent additions include: Walt Kuhn’s Two Clowns (1940), a characteristic work by a major figure in American Modernism, given by longtime Museum supporters Hans and Betty Krahmer; and Tyrone Mitchell’s Nature/Culture/Blues (1991), one of several contemporary works by influential African American artists given to the Museum by Rob Abel, a Wilmington ophthalmologist, and his wife Mike.

The Delaware Art Museum recently received 50 works of Minimal and Conceptual art from the renowned collection of Dorothy and Herbert Vogel as part of a joint initiative called Fifty Works for Fifty States that was launched by the Vogels and the National Gallery of Art, with support the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. This program is distributing 2,500 works from the Vogels’ collection of contemporary art throughout the nation, with 50 works going to a selected institution in each of the 50 states. Gifted offers 10 works from the Delaware Art Museum’s Vogel collection, including pieces by Lynda Benglis and Edda Renouf, and all 50 will go on display as part of an exhibition planned for 2009.