September 5 - December 15, 2019

The museum is extending its celebration of Colgate’s Bicentennial by presenting an in-depth look at the past, present, and future of the art collections at the Picker Art Gallery in the exhibition Original Materials: The Picker Art Gallery and the Building of a Collection. Drawing from the museum’s holdings, along with documents and photographs from Colgate’s University Archives, the exhibition explores significant moments in the museum’s development, considers the people who helped to build the collection, and examines the ways in which the Picker has contributed to a Colgate education.

An eclectic selection of objects—from European illuminated manuscripts and Chinese porcelain to American paintings and contemporary photography—come together as examples of the rich variety of forms for human creative expression in the visual arts. Featuring more than eighty artworks, Original Materials highlights some of the principal subcollections that form an integral part of the museum’s unique past while actively engaging with questions about the museum’s present and its future as a teaching museum.

Image: Andō Hiroshige (Japanese, 1797–1858), Nihonbashi, from the series Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road, 1831–34, color woodblock print. Gift of Henry Colgate, 1955.1.1. Photo: Warren Wheeler