The Solomon Collection: Dürer to Degas and Beyond

, University Study Gallery, University Research Gallery, University Teaching Gallery, Harvard Art Museums
Abstracted brushstrokes of a pink, yellow, and red sky with a large black form on the left-hand side.

Jules Olitski, “April Dream, Lavender and Black,” 2003. Opaque watercolor on heavy weight white wove paper. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Arthur K. and Mariot F. Solomon Collection, 2021.233. © 2024 Jules Olitski Art Foundation/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

University Study Gallery, University Research Gallery, University Teaching Gallery, Harvard Art Museums

Explore a remarkable collection of artworks that span the centuries and discover how it was assembled over seven decades.

The Solomon Collection: Dürer to Degas and Beyond celebrates a significant recent bequest to the Harvard Art Museums from passionate collectors Arthur K. and Mariot F. Solomon. The exhibition spotlights over 135 works, including paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints by some of the most significant artists from the Renaissance to the 20th century, and offers visitors an intimate view into the highly personal yet inherently collaborative nature of art collecting.

The artists featured span six centuries and include virtuoso printmakers, from the pioneers of engraving such as Hans Sebald Beham, Martin Schongauer, and Albrecht Dürer to inventive painter-etchers like Salvator Rosa, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, and Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes; provocateurs of 19th-century painting such as Eugène Delacroix, Théodore Géricault, Gustave Courbet, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and Paul Cézanne; groundbreaking sculptors like Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Henry Moore, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, David Smith, and Anthony Caro; trailblazers of abstraction like Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, and Larry Poons; and stalwart Boston artists Marjorie Minkin and Peter Lipsitt.

An accompanying print catalogue highlights works in the Solomon Collection with entries written by curators, former and current postdoctoral fellows, and Harvard faculty and graduate students. The volume also includes a history of the couple’s lifelong engagement with art and the dealers, professors, and curators who helped inform their collecting.

Curated by A. Cassandra Albinson, Margaret S. Winthrop Curator of European Art and Head of the Division of European and American Art; Marina Kliger, Rousseau Curatorial Fellow in European Art; and Casey Kane Monahan, Cunningham Senior Curatorial Assistant for the Collection in the Division of European and American Art, Harvard Art Museums.

Support for this exhibition is provided by the Arthur K. and Mariot F. Solomon Care of the Collection Endowment Fund, Mariot F. Solomon Care of Collections Fund, and the Martha Tedeschi Exhibition Fund, made possible by The Lunder Foundation-Peter and Paula Lunder Family.

Online Resource
Browse the entire Solomon Collection of more than 250 works gifted to the museums in 2021 by visiting our Collections page through this link.

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