Produced and directed by Megumi Sasaki, in follow-up to her award-winning documentary Herb & Dorothy (2008), Herb & Dorothy 50X50 captures the last chapter of Dorothy and Herb Vogel’s extraordinary legacy of art-giving through which the couple — in concert with the National Gallery of Art, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Institute if Museum and Library Services — distributed fifty works to one institution in each of the fifty states. The screening of Herb & Dorothy 50X50 is presented in conjunction with the exhibition “It’s What You Do With What You View”: Selections from the Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art on view through September 14 at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art.
Following the film screening, Dorothy Vogel and Megumi Sasaki will engage in a public question and answer discussion. The BCMA will then host a special reception for the audience, inviting them to further speak with Vogel and Sasaki and to view the exhibition of a selection of works given to the museum by Dorothy Vogel in January 2014. The film and reception are open to the public.
Herb and Dorothy Vogel began collecting art in the early 1960s and created one of the world’s most notable collections of minimal, conceptual, and post-minimal art. The Vogels made a major gift from their collection to the National Gallery of Art in 1992. Sixteen years later, they launched The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works to Fifty States — the initiative captured by Sasaki in Herb & Dorothy 50X50. A ‘road trip movie’ through the art world, the film raises questions about what it requires to support art in today’s society, takes the audience on a journey across the US to eleven recipient museums — from Honolulu to Fargo — meeting curators and visitors, and introduces famous artists, as well as unknown favorites of Herb and Dorothy.
“It’s What You Do With What You View” celebrates the generous donation of over 300 works from the celebrated collection of Dorothy and Herbert Vogel by Dorothy Vogel to the BCMA in January 2014. The show reflects the evolving history of minimal, post-minimal, and conceptual art practice, and features the work of numerous major contemporary artists including Robert Barry, Dan Graham, Edda Renouf, Julian Schnabel, Pat Steir, Richard Tuttle, in addition to original work by Dorothy and Herbert Vogel themselves.
