Visual Education:
Selections from the Goucher College and Sidney and Jean Flah Silber ’54 Collections
September 12 – October 18, 2009
The Silber Gallery
Goucher College Athenaeum
Robert Motherwell, “Elegy to the Spanish Republic XXV-B,” 1953. Goucher College collection, gift of Mrs. Ethel Steuer Epstein ’21. Photo by Jeff Goldman.
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We feel a little selfish that the pictures have thus far been hung only in the [President’s] House…I plan…to determine whether we should show the pictures in other buildings and also include in our plans for future buildings suitable space for them.” Goucher College President Otto F. Kraushaar to Ethel S. Epstein (Mrs. Henry Epstein) ’21, who donated works by Motherwell, Marisol, Jawlensky, Vlaminck, and Campigli.
The opening of The Silber Gallery in the Goucher College Athenaeum fulfills President Kraushaar’s vision of more than 50 years ago: to provide a suitably secure gallery dedicated solely to the exhibition of art, both from the Goucher collection and from contemporary artists and collectors outside the campus. Mr. and Mrs. Sidney and Jean Flah Silber ’54 have long appreciated the capacity of the visual arts to express meaning, to communicate the insights and emotions of the individual, and to convey the character of a place, a people, and a time. They realize how powerfully art can teach, both inside the classroom and beyond, and they understand the lessons it offers students of the human experience and the natural world. To celebrate the opening of The Silber Gallery in the Goucher College Athenaeum, this inaugural exhibition showcases selected works from the college’s art collection as well as highlights from the Silber collection.
Dr. John Franklin Goucher in his study, 1901, Goucher College Archives.
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… a collector of idols, rare gems, stones, flints, and butterflies. His houses…were veritable museums of choice possessions, and he took great delight in showing his treasures to sympathetic guests.” Anna Heubeck Knipp and Thaddeus P. Thomas on Dr. Goucher in The History of Goucher College (1938)
Dr. John Franklin Goucher, founder—with his wife Mary Fisher Goucher—and second president of the college, was an enthusiastic amasser of things, bringing home from frequent travels to such places as Mexico, Egypt, and Asia an eclectic assortment of curios, mementos, and souvenirs, which even included genuine mummies. The breadth of Dr. Goucher’s collection suggests the wide-ranging interests and inquisitive nature of a 19th-century educated gentleman. While many of Dr. Goucher’s treasures filled the shelves and walls of his private homes, others helped to form the nucleus of the college’s museum of natural history and historic and ethnographic artifacts. These were displayed on the top floors of Goucher Hall, the college’s original building on St. Paul Street, now a landmark of Baltimore’s Old Goucher Historic District. Today, one of Dr. Goucher’s mummies is on permanent loan to the Walters Art Museum, the other to Johns Hopkins University.
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The study and appreciation of the arts and their practice by those who possess special talents is a fundamental aim of modern liberal education…The liberal arts college may be expected to play a role of growing significance as a center for the study and practice of the arts. Discriminating alumnae collectors are in a position to be of great assistance to their colleges in fulfilling that aim.” Goucher College President Otto F. Kraushaar, from “The Collection of Mrs. Henry Epstein,” The Goucher Alumnae Quarterly, Winter 1963
Over the years and during the move from Goucher’s old Baltimore campus to the new Towson site in the 1950s, the focus of the college’s collecting changed; sponges, minerals, and specimens of taxidermy were replaced by paintings, prints, photographs, sculpture, and textiles. Through purchases, grants and, especially, as President Otto Kraushaar recognized, gifts from generous alumnae, the college acquired—and continues to acquire—a variety of works of art, deemed by the college and by their donors to be essential components of a liberal arts education. President Kraushaar was clearly speaking in broad and abstract terms, but he was also keenly aware of a more practical problem associated with developing a liberal arts college—Goucher College—as a center for the study and practice of art: where could the college exhibit the gifts of such discriminating alumnae collectors, especially works of considerable value or fragility? Through their generosity, Mr. and Mrs. Silber have provided Goucher College a space for such visual education in the heart of the new building at the heart of the campus. For this extraordinary gift, the college is truly grateful.
Mende helmet mask. Goucher College collection, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Harvey and Phyllis Schreter ’43. Photo courtesy of Ed Worteck.
Alexej von Jawlensky, Still Life with Figurine, 1909/12. Goucher College collection, gift of Mrs. Ethel Steuer Epstein ’21. Photo by Jeff Goldman.
Art objects speak a language of their own; color, line, shape, space, texture, pattern, rhythm, all communicate as eloquently as words. Every work of art, every painting, print, photograph, and sculpture, carries within its physical form the conscious and unconscious ideas, feelings, and assumptions of its creator and its creator’s culture. An education without images and objects would be as impoverished as an education without books.
THE SIDNEY AND JEAN FLAH SILBER ’54 ART GALLERY The Silber Gallery provides a magnificent new home for Goucher’s critically acclaimed program of contemporary art exhibitions, as well as for temporary displays of works from the college’s collection and from other institutions and private collectors. The Silber Gallery is visible on the Athenaeum’s exterior as a distinctive redwood-sided box. Its interior can be seen through the large preview window at the building’s main entrance. With 1,000 square feet of exhibition space and a 21-foot ceiling outfitted with bars capable of supporting 2,000 pounds, the gallery can comfortably house large-scale works of painting, sculpture, and electronic media, as well as ambitious installations. The gallery has an independent heating and cooling system, enabling specific control of its temperature and, especially, humidity levels. In addition, the gallery has its own security system, a dedicated loading dock, and a platform adjacent to the reception area for social events.
THE IRENE GRILL ’52 ART CONSERVATORY The Grill Art Conservatory shares its state-of-the-art heating, cooling, and security systems with the Silber Gallery. The conservatory is furnished with compact mobile storage units, including specialized sliding walls for framed artwork, drawers and compartments for threedimensional objects, and flat files for works on paper. The conservatory is adjacent to a classroom, which will give individuals and large groups the opportunity to examine and study pieces from the collection—allowing Goucher faculty to integrate the collection more fully with their teaching and with their own and students’ research projects.
The Silber Gallery
Goucher College Athenaeum Directions
Baltimore Beltway, I-695, to exit 27A. Make first left onto campus. Gallery Hours
11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday to Saturday. 410.337.6477 The Silber Gallery is free and open to the public.