All together now: Stunning gift of Degas sculptures finds a home at Purdue

As a Purdue University student in the 1950s, Avrum Gray was so busy with mechanical engineering classes that he had very little time for the arts and humanities.

“I think I must have had two, maybe three, liberal arts courses in four years,” says Gray, who graduated with an ME degree in 1956. “You were immersed in engineering. That’s the way it was.”

Today, nearly seven decades after his graduation from Purdue, a high-profile gift from Gray to the university’s College of Liberal Arts – a collection of 74 bronze sculptures by the French impressionist Edgar Degas – has the potential to change the way students across colleges, disciplines and majors engage with the arts on campus.

The gift, which was announced by Purdue in February 2023, is valued at more than $21 million, with a market value of as much as $52 million and represents the largest gift in the history of the College of Liberal Arts. It immediately elevated the profile of Purdue Galleries, which is now one of the world’s premiere repositories of Degas’ artwork.

The collection – which includes “La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans (Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen),” one of the artist’s most iconic works – went on view to the public in September in a new, specially designed gallery in the Purdue Memorial Union. The opening was accompanied by much fanfare and even international publicity, as it is believed to be the only complete collection of Degas sculptures currently on display anywhere in the world.

“This would be a significant contribution to most museums or collections. And for us, it’s a game-changer,” said Arne Flaten, head of Purdue’s Patti and Rusty Rueff School of Design, Art, and Performance and professor of art history, in September, when the exhibition opened. That it has been given to Purdue University – an institution known for its STEM programs, and the only Big Ten institution without an art museum – is particularly notable.

“Art at Purdue will thrive as an essential dimension of a leading institution of higher learning,” Purdue President Mung Chiang said in a statement.

“The visionary generosity from Av Gray brings the largest collection of Degas sculptures to our campus, and we are truly excited about the transformational impact to the creation of beauty by Boilermakers.”

Edgar Degas, 1834-1917

A French impressionist artist active in the late 19th century, Degas is renowned for his depictions of modern urban life – including ballet classes, dance performances and horse races. Though he is known primarily for his pastel drawings and oil paintings, Degas also created 150 small wax, clay and plaster sculptures – representations of dancers and horses and studies of the human body – that were discovered in his studio after his death in 1917. In Degas’ lifetime, only the sculpture called “Little Dancer” was ever displayed. The rest of the figures were working models that, like some artists’ rough sketches, were never intended to be viewed by the public.

“Scholars think that he was making this set of sculptures to inform his two-dimensional work,” says Erika Kvam, Purdue Galleries director and head curator. In forming the sculptures, the artist could study movement or musculature before he ever put his brush to canvas, and by posing them he could observe the play of light and shadow over the lines and curves.

After his death, Degas’ heirs elected to commission bronzes of 74 of these sculptures – choosing the figures that were most complete or most representative of his work. Starting in 1919, a limited edition of 22 sets were cast by the Hébrard Foundry in Paris. One of those sets is now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

Decades later, in the 1990s, the plaster casts for the sculptures were rediscovered, and 29 more sets were produced by the Valsuani Foundry in France, and it is one of these sets that was eventually purchased by the collector Avrum Gray.

‘I got the bug’

After graduating from Purdue in 1956, Gray served as a second lieutenant in the United States Army before returning home to Glencoe, Illinois, to begin a job in automotive manufacturing – a career that lasted 25 years. A second career as an executive in money management and venture capitalism lasted another 25 years.

“I was sort of a workaholic,” Gray says.

Through the years, Gray maintained a relationship with his alma mater. In 2006, Gray and his wife established the Avrum and Joyce Gray Directorship in Purdue’s Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship. In 2019, Gray was honored with Purdue’s Outstanding Mechanical Engineer Award.

Gray began building his art collection not long after his graduation from Purdue, as a young professional.

“I got the bug and was able to act on it,” says Gray, who had an eye for impressionist and early modern artwork, including works by Picasso, Monet and Kandinsky. “What I could afford were works on paper, so I found ones I liked, and I bought them.”

About 15 years ago, Gray purchased a complete set of Degas bronze sculptures through an art dealer. He displayed a few pieces, including “Little Dancer,” in his home, and kept the rest in storage.

“I mean, where do you put 74 pieces?” Gray chuckles. “Believe me, my house wasn’t big enough.” provided by Purdue University - College of Liberal Arts

Now, at age 89, Gray is taking care to ensure that his art collection will be cared for and accessible to future generations. He chose Purdue as the beneficiary of the Degas sculptures because he felt confident that they would have more impact on campus than at a renowned art museum.

“One of the difficulties with many of the museums – including the Art Institute [of Chicago], which I’m familiar with – is they have so much art, but they only have so many walls,” Gray says. “And in their sub-sub-basements, or wherever they keep their extra stuff, they’ve got enough art to fill up two or three institutions.

Class of 1956 alumni Avrum Gray donated 74 bronze Degas sculptures to the university, the single largest gift in the history of the College of Liberal Arts. The collection is valued at more than $21 million with a market value of as much as $52 million.

“I wanted the art to be seen,” Gray continues. “To me, art should be enjoyed by people. And to have it go to some place that’ll put it in the basement and take it out every five years or something – that just didn’t feel right to me.”

Discussions with Purdue officials about the gift began in earnest in 2021. As the two parties worked to finalize the arrangement, Gray made it clear that he wanted to keep the collection intact, and that he would love to see the sculptures displayed together. Although in policy and practice, museums and other institutions do not usually accept gifts with conditions, university administrators and faculty members involved in the talks took his wishes into consideration.

“Av said, ‘I would really love to see this collection all together, all at once, even just for a week, even just for a day. That’s really important to me,’ ” Kvam recalls. At his home, “he had never been able to get it all out, to have it on display for a length of time. So that was kind of the guiding principle.”

An earthquake during the eclipse during the blue moon

From the beginning, Kvam says, Purdue administrators were on board, offering resources and support as Purdue Galleries prepared to receive and display the collection.

“We could not have been more supported by both the college and the President’s office,” Kvam says.

Without a dedicated art museum, Purdue had no existing gallery space ready to display the Degas collection. Various campus locations were considered for the exhibition, but, according to Kvam, Purdue President Chiang insisted that they use a space on the second floor of the Purdue Memorial Union –arguably the most visible and accessible building on campus.

“Essentially he said, ‘No, we’re not going to put this in some random building on campus. I want this in the Union. You can have the Sagamore Room,’ ” she recalls.

Kvam describes the opportunity to transform what was once a dark, wood-paneled faculty dining room into a light-filled showcase for celebrated artwork as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

“This sort of planning is not something that happens in one’s museum career. This is something like an earthquake happening during an eclipse during the blue moon, to be able to design the space around a collection of this caliber,” says Kvam, who, along with assistant professor of interior design Laura Bittner, was given “an incredibly healthy budget” to dream up a gallery space, from the tiles on the floor to the overhead lighting. “There was no road map. There was no person I could call and say, ‘Can you tell me how you did this?’ because it’s just not something that happens all that often.”

The Degas exhibition opened to the public on Sept. 18 in Room 231 of the Purdue Memorial Union, with the iconic “Little Dancer,” standing 39 inches high and wearing a sleeveless bodice and cloth tutu, prominently displayed near the entrance. The other sculptures – representing different themes found in Degas’ work, including dancers, bathers and horses – are arrayed in custom-designed cases at various heights throughout the gallery, so that they can be visible at once from a single vantage point.

Closer inspection reveals scratches from the artist’s tools, pinch marks from his fingers, and the wire armature undergirding the figures and makes it clear that Degas’ original sculptures were all in different stages of completion. Three sculptures arranged in the same display case, for instance, show dancers in identical poses: limbs stretched, muscles taught. But while one sculpture is very rough and almost rudimentary, the second and third are subsequently more polished, with details more finely rendered, as if the artist was practicing, reworking and refining his process with each attempt.

“This is, to our knowledge, the only display of all 74 of his sculptures all together in a single gallery. And that is extraordinary in and of itself,” Kvam says. “But I think that the fact that it is so accessible to our visitors – it’s in the PMU, right upstairs from the atrium and the big map – tells them how much importance is placed on this collection.”

“You can go to the Guggenheim and there will be a handful of these kinds of things on display, and you can go to other places for a few of them, but you really don’t ever get to see all of them anywhere. And this is the only complete collection of them in the Western Hemisphere,” Flaten says. “So, this was a really sort of exciting opportunity for a place like Purdue University to really double down on doing it right.”

‘Leaps and bounds’

Indeed, the exhibition has attracted a lot of attention to the university and helps to put Purdue on the map not just as an excellent engineering and STEM-based school, but also as a destination for arts and culture.

“A lot of people come here thinking about Neil Armstrong and Amelia Earhart, and now there are other reasons to think about Purdue,” Flaten says.

In November, Kate Saragosa traveled from Melrose, Mass., to West Lafayette for Fall Family Weekend. Her son, Adam, enrolled as a freshman earlier in the fall and plans to major in statistics. The weekend’s busy schedule included a football game, campus tours and dinners out, but Saragosa made sure also to fit in a visit to the Degas exhibition, which she learned about in a “Purdue News Weekly” newsletter.

“I was very excited, because I’ve always been a huge Degas fan,” says Saragosa, who then posted about the exhibition on social media. “I was excited to tell friends that Purdue has this Degas exhibit. It definitely is a special, unique addition that they’re very lucky to have. It’s something to add to the pride of Purdue.”

Flaten emphasizes that the exhibition is not the end-all, but rather a step in the right direction. The Degas collection, while exciting and ground-breaking on its own, also helps to boost awareness and increase visibility of Purdue’s other arts and culture programs and offerings.

“Purdue has been playing catch-up in the arts, and I don’t think that Purdue’s mission should ever be to sacrifice one for the other,” Flaten says. “Purdue is big enough and strong enough and so well known that you don’t have to give up on one to be excellent in the other. And that’s sort of where we’re moving right now – to be excellent in all these areas.”

Abby Zickmund, a 2023 Purdue graduate in visual communication design, visited the Degas exhibition in November. To her, the collection represents a shift in priorities at Purdue.

“Purdue dominates the world of STEM in many areas. As an art student, or any student not in STEM, it was easy to feel left behind,” Zickmund says. “The Degas Collection on display puts the studio arts and technology program and the College of Liberal Arts on display. The hard efforts and brilliant teachers in the college will not easily be forgotten after this successful collection and gallery opening.”

Some are hopeful that the Degas acquisition takes the university one step closer to realizing the dream of a university art museum.

“The Degas collection helps us move in that direction,” Flaten says. “In and of itself, it’s terrific as it is. But the implications of where it could lead us down the road, if we’re patient and we’re focused, could be really exciting.”

“Basically, this collection deserves to be in a museum,” Kvam says. “I think that it has put Purdue Galleries and our permanent collection on the radar of more people than we have ever been on before. Therefore, we are leaps and bounds closer to possibly having a museum than we have been before. I am hopeful that enough people are recognizing that, firstly, Purdue is the only Big Ten institution without a museum, and secondly, that this is actually a possibility for us. Hopefully we will be considered when the next building is being planned or strategic plan is being drawn up.”

For the time being, though, any talk about a Purdue University art museum is merely hope and speculation. And any realization of that dream would be years in the future. In the meantime, the Degas exhibition will be on view in the Purdue Memorial Union through at least the end of the year. Although Purdue Galleries’ lease on the space expires in December, Kvam says she is “cautiously optimistic” that funding will come through to keep the exhibition there indefinitely. If not, she says, she is considering options for relocating the collection.

“It’s such a beautiful space and so much time and money and energy was put into making that happen. It would be hard for me to imagine that that’s going away anytime soon,” Flaten says.

‘You still have to fail’

The fact that the Degas collection does not have a permanent home on campus does not mean that it doesn’t belong at Purdue, Kvam stresses. As the recipient of a renowned collection of Degas sculpture, the university was an unconventional choice. At the same time, it’s a very natural fit, she says.

“It is surprising that it is here, but it is quite obviously beneficial to this particular campus. I think that it may have had an impact at someplace like the art institute or the Met. But because it’s so unexpected here, it actually has a greater impact in the lives of our campus and our community.”

Flaten suggests that there are many different ways that students can engage with the artwork within their majors. Kinesiology majors can study the musculature and movement of the dancers. Chemistry students can analyze the make-up of the bronze medium. Computer science students can practice 3D modeling of the figures. “Hopefully there will be an opportunity to start slowly, bringing in other parts of the campus to collaborate on different ways that these can be used and studied and catalogued,” he says.

If nothing else, the collection can inspire all scholars to think like artists, Kvam says. The exhibition reveals just how much study and effort and practice and failure go into the act of creation.

“A lot of people just kind of assume that artwork is either there, or it’s not; you are either an artist, or you’re not; you’re creative, or you just don’t have that. And the fact of the matter is that even if you are a world-renowned artist, you still have to practice and practice and practice. And you still have to fail. And you still have to figure out why you failed. And you still have to go through and learn.”

And, in the words of the donor, Avrum Gray: “You’ve got to broaden your education. For Purdue students to see a different side of the world by seeing art – I think it’s the right thing.” ★

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