The Elvehjem Art Center (now the Chazen Museum of Art) opened in 1970 with a collection of less than 5,000 objects and a temporary exhibition that brought together artworks already donated to the university alongside works lent by alumni and friends. In the decades since, thirty of those loaned pieces have entered the Chazen’s collection, which has expanded to more than 25,000 works.
The Chazen has long presented a rotating schedule of temporary exhibitions alongside displays drawn from its permanent collection. In celebration of the Chazen’s newly reinstalled collection galleries, which you can visit on the third floor, Recollection: Exhibiting the Collection explores the lively, ongoing conversation between the museum’s collection and its exhibition program.
The collection serves as a vital and generative resource for curators by sparking new exhibition ideas and forming the foundation of many temporary exhibitions. Some shows have been inspired by, or drawn entirely from, the museum’s holdings. In other cases, artworks lent by artists or private collectors for temporary exhibitions proved so compelling that they later joined the collection as purchases or gifts.
In its first two sections, Recollection: Exhibiting the Collection spotlights artworks acquired directly from past exhibitions, and works already in the collection that played pivotal roles in the conception of them. The final section recreates two influential exhibitions from the museum’s past that have left a lasting imprint on the Chazen’s collection and identity.