Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center

One of the exhibition organizers and Associate Professor and Chair of Film at Vassar, Erica Stein, speaks to photographer, filmmaker, and songwriter/ musician, Bev Grant who became politically active through women’s movement demonstrations in the late 1960s. ⁠ ⁠ As a member of New York Radical Women, she protested the 1969 Miss America Pageant (held in September 1968) and made a short film with Karen Mitnick Liptak about the protests, "Up Against the Wall⁠ Miss America" (Newsreel #22, 1968) playing on Screen 2 in the gallery. Liptak and Grant joined the Newsreel collective, and "Up Against the Wall Miss America" became the first explicitly feminist Newsreel film and one of the first films to emerge from the women’s movement. ⁠ ⁠ Photograph featured: Bev Grant (American, b. 1942), “New York Radical Women organizers at a planning meeting,” Southern Conference Educational Fund offices, New York City, Summer 1968, gelatin silver print © Bev Grant⁠ ⁠ #BevGrant #WomensWork #NewYorkRadicalWomen #TheLoeb #VassarCollege ⁠

“On the Belly of Courage, the Hand of Anxiety” playfully captures Japanese citizens’ fears of Western invasion. Here, figures rest in various states of “courage” on top of a giant stomach, recognizable by the belly button below the shamisen player near the center of the right panel.⁠ ⁠ As censorship regulations loosened at the end of the Edo period, Japanese media increasingly addressed political issues and current events in woodblock prints and newspapers. Satirical prints called awate-e (hysteria pictures), caricaturizing the public’s trepidation over foreign relations and reactions to disaster in the cities of Edo and Yokohama, emerged at this time. While awate-e were a news medium, the genre was also intended to entertain—like political cartoons today. See this Japanese Woodblock print and others in “Bunmei Kaika: Political Landscape of Early Modern and Modern Japan” on view through June 7th. ⁠ ⁠ —⁠ Currently Unidentified, “On the Belly of Courage, the Hand of Anxiety,” 1864, woodblock print; ink and color on paper, Purchase, Betsy Mudge Wilson, class of 1956, Memorial Fund, 2025.22.2⁠ ⁠ #JapanesePrints #WoodblockPrints #TheLoeb #ArtMuseum #VassarCollege⁠

Monica J. Freeman created “Valerie”, a film portrait featuring sculptor, teacher, and printmaker Valerie Maynard at work at the Studio Museum of Harlem, where she was the first artist-in-residence. ⁠ ⁠ Monica J. Freeman made "Valerie" while working with Nafisi Productions, a Black filmmaking collective founded by John Wise. She also programmed films, including "Valerie", for The Sojourner Truth Festival of the Arts, co-organized by Faith Ringgold in 1976. Freeman’s program, Focus on Film, is considered the first Black women’s film festival.⁠ ⁠ You have the opportunity to view this 15 minute film in full in our current exhibition, “Women’s Work: Organizing New York Independent Film & Video” on view through May 24. The exhibition reframes women’s work, showcasing and celebrating the organizing labor that enabled groundbreaking film, video, and community media collectives. ⁠ ⁠ #WomensWork #ValerieMaynard #BlackWomenFilmmakers #MonicaJFreeman #TheLoeb ⁠

This new installation of works on paper from the Loeb’s collection pays homage to the importance of collage as a technique of modernist art, as well as the role of curator, art historian, and Vassar alum Margaret Miller ‘34 in historicizing collage in the mid-twentieth century. ⁠ ⁠ In 1948 Miller organized “Collage” a retrospective exhibition surveying uses of the technique in twentieth-century art for MoMA. She recognized collage not just as a popular technique of modernist art, but understood it as a sign of the times—a direct and evocative gesture that artists used to respond to the violence and destruction of modernity.⁠ ⁠ #Collage #TheLoeb #WorksonPaper #MargaretMiller #ArtMuseum ⁠

2026’s Take One Picture project with @vassarcollege concluded with an amazing all-school presentation at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center today! First, everyone had a walk around @theloeb  to see “Camels by the Watering Place” by Jean-Léon Gérôme—the focus of this year’s project—in person, as well as all the other beautiful artwork. Then, in Taylor Hall, students presented their own responses to Gérôme’s painting, including a story about camels getting lost in the desert, poems about water and camels, an analysis of the art piece’s Orientalism, research projects about various parts of the piece’s setting, students’ own artwork, and even multilingual analyses of the painting (including in American Sign Language, the subject of a current central study course). As always, there was a broad spectrum of interesting and surprising interpretations throughout the student body that wowed the audience. Everyone did an excellent job! Thank you to Vassar and the Loeb for having us; everyone had a great time once again bringing the painting and their learning to life! #poughkeepsieday #progressiveeducation #independentschool #hudsonvalley #poughkeepsieny

Step into the world of “Bunmei Kaika: Political Landscapes in Early Modern and Modern Japan” with Deknatel Curatorial Fellow Monique D’Almeida as she unpacks some of the main themes of the exhibition! ⁠ ⁠ This exhibition illuminates a thriving print culture whose clever navigation of government regulations and prohibitions, playful and daring rendering of current events, and feeding of public interest cultivated the national imagination of a modernizing Japan during the Edo Period. ⁠ ⁠ Make sure to stop by the Loeb to see “Bunmei Kaika” before it closes on June 7th! ⁠ ⁠ #Bunmeikaika #theloeb #Japaneseprints #Hiroshige #Edoperiod #collegeartmuseum #arthistory

In "The Botanist" (1875), Belgian painter Alfred Ronner captures a quiet moment of scientific inquiry and observation. Surrounded by books, botanical charts, and carefully gathered wildflowers, a young woman studies local wildflowers with precision and care—reflecting the important yet often overlooked role women played in the field of botany during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.⁠ ⁠ At a time when women were frequently excluded from formal scientific institutions, botany became one of the few sciences considered appropriate for study within the domestic sphere. Botany was associated with common attributes of femininity and domesticity, such as caretaking, delicacy, and aesthetic value.⁠ ⁠ The Botanist remains a powerful reflection on women’s contributions to science, education, and observation—central themes in the Loeb's exhibition, “The Botanist at Vassar”.⁠ ⁠ —⁠ Alfred Ronner (Belgian, 1852-1901),"The Botanist", 1875, oil on canvas, Gift of Rezin A. Wight⁠ 1880.2⁠ ⁠ ⁠ #TheBotanist #AlfredRonner #Botany #TheLoeb #VassarCollege

Yesterday marked two hundred years after the birth of Frederic Edwin Church on May 4, 1826. ⁠ ⁠ We invite you to visit our small exhibition "Splitting the Horizon: Frederic Church Between Border and Bridge" to explore two of Church’s paintings in the context of expansionist infrastructural projects in the Western Hemisphere. ⁠ ⁠ While engaging with this show, we ask you to consider how Church’s travels through South America are ideologically linked to later American interventions in the continent, like the construction of the Panama Canal.⁠ ⁠ This display is part of the Frederic Church 200 initiative, launched by the Olana Partnership to celebrate and extend the artist’s legacy on the bicentenary of his birth. For more information, visit Olana.org. ⁠ ⁠ -⁠ Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900), "Summer in South America," 1853, oil on board, Gift of Matthew Vassar, 1864.1.18⁠ ⁠ #FredericChurch #FredericChurch200 #TheOlanaPartnership #TheLoeb #VassarCollege⁠ ⁠ ⁠

Take a look at our collection through the eyes of the Loeb Staff! In our first video of the “Staff Picks” series, Security Guard Dominic Canino offers a look at his favorite piece in the galleries, the Roman “Front Panel of a Child’s Sarcophagus” from the 3rd century. This piece is rife with hidden symbolism that reveals how the Romans mourned a life cut short. #staffpicks #theloeb #collegemuseum #vassarcollege #art

Just one month left to experience "Women’s Work: Organizing New York Independent Film & Video" before it closes on May 24. This exhibition invites us to rethink what “women’s work” has meant and what it can mean by centering the often unseen labor of organizing, connecting, and sustaining creative communities. ⁠ ⁠ Through archival materials, film, and behind-the-scenes documents, it highlights how collectives like Third World Newsreel, Paper Tiger Television, and Women Make Movies reshaped media-making from the 1960s–1990s. From activist meetings to DIY production tools, this show reveals how powerful storytelling is built, not just on what we see on screen, but on the care, collaboration, and labor behind it.⁠ ⁠ Photos by Karl Rabe

Thank you to everyone who joined us for a gallery talk on the Meiji war prints featured in Bunmei Kaika: Political Landscape in Early Modern and Modern Japan. Assistant Professor of History Yu-chi Chang and curator Monique D’Almeida led a thoughtful conversation on the 1874 Japanese military campaign against the Indigenous peoples of southern Taiwan and the colonial perspectives reflected in these works.⁠ ⁠ Following the talk and Q&A, visitors continued the discussion in the galleries through a close look at selected prints from the exhibition.

Inspired by the traditions of herbaria, botanical drawing, and Anna Atkins’s cyanotypes, as well as by the medicinal gardens of Shaker communities in New York State, local Poughkeepsie artist Julia Whitney Barnes combined various media to create the large-scale Planting Utopia (Whom Do I Love). ⁠ ⁠ The work begins with a cyanotype made by placing plants directly on light-sensitive paper, in the tradition of Anna Atkin’s Cyanotype pictured on the right, then builds further with watercolor, gouache, and ink over the blue photographic ground.The composition is further divided into rectangular boxes that appear like raised garden beds. ⁠ ⁠ Come see Planting Utopia and other works that demonstrate the intersection of art and science in “The Botanist at Vassar”.⁠ ⁠ Julia Whitney Barnes (b. 1979), "Planting Utopia (Whom Do I Love)," 2022-2024, Watercolor, gouache, ink, and cyanotype on cotton Arches paper⁠ (unique), Loan courtesy of the artist⁠ ⁠ ⁠ Anna Atkins (1799-1871), "Ptelea trifoliata [Wafer ash]," 1845, cyanotype, Purchase, E. Powis and Anne Keating Jones, class of 1943, Fund 1983.24⁠