75th Anniversary Timeline
Thomas Cochran, Class of 1890
1928: Phillips Academy alumnus, trustee, and benefactor Thomas Cochran, Class of 1890 (1871–1936), donates 50 American paintings to Phillips Academy in honor of the school’s 150th Anniversary and calls for the establishment of an art museum at the school.
1929: Ground is broken for the museum building designed by architect Charles A. Platt (1861–1933). 1930: Charles H. Sawyer ’24 (1906–2005) is appointed first director of the Addison.
“The best of its kind” defines almost every aspect of the Addison collection, which has grown to nearly 15,000 objects. Not one of Cochran’s acquisitions was abstract or modernist, though very soon after the museum opened this was remedied. Over the years the Old Masters were joined by new, fresh faces. The collection is still encyclopedic, but, of course, that term changes as American art changes. It has grown in all areas but especially in art by living artists. As John Sloan, George Bellows, Marsden Hartley, Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, Charles Sheeler, Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, Agnes Martin, Richard Serra, Kenneth Nolan, Louise Nevelson, Chuck Close, Alex Katz, Lorna Simpson, Anna Gaskell and many others grew in fame—and often long before—so, too, did some of their best work enter the Addison. In 1934, at a cost of $5 a print, the Addison bought work by the photographer Margaret Bourke-White, its first purchase in that medium. With this prescient acquisition the gallery became an early player in the realm of collecting photographs. While the Addison’s collection offers an exemplary overview of the history of American photography, its significance lies in indepth holdings of works by key artists, including Eadweard Muybridge’s “The Attitudes of Animals in Motion” from 1881 as well as Robert Frank’s series “The Americans” from 1955. We have great strength in every area of photography but especially in Western landscapes, nineteenth- and twentieth-century documentary photography, street photography, and conceptual work. A museum director friend aptly summarized the strength of the Addison’s collection. “Having three
Exterior view, Addison Gallery of American Art, early 1930s. Photograph by George H. Davis Studio
1931: The Addison Gallery of American Art, named for Cochran’s late friend Keturah Addison Cobb, opens to the public in May. The core collection of approximately 500 works includes paintings by Winslow Homer, Arthur B. Davies, George Bellows, and Thomas Eakins.
Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) Professor Henry A. Rowland, 1897 oil on canvas, 80 1/4 x 54 in. gift of Stephen C. Clark, Esq.
George Bellows (1882–1925) Anne in Purple Wrap, 1921 oil on panel, 40 1/2 x 32 1/2 in. gift of anonymous donor
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