Fogg Receives Art Gift Worth $20 Million

Two longtime supporters of the Fogg Museum, George S. Abrams '54 and his wife Maida Abrams, have donated a $20 million art collection to the University, museum officials announced this week.

The collection is made up of 110 drawings by 17th century Dutch masters and includes two works by Rembrandt and one by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

"It is the largest and most comprehensive private collection of drawings from the Netherlands of the 17th century in existence," said William W. Robinson, the Fogg's drawings curator.

"It has a broad representation of major artists," Robinson said. "It represents material you couldn't buy in a lot of cases with all the money in the world, because it doesn't exist anymore outside museums."

Robinson said he is planning an exhibition of the new collection, which will be shown at the Fogg and museums in London and Paris during 2001 and 2002.

The Abrams started collecting the drawings when they began travelling to Europe in the 1960s and have continued for nearly forty years.

"We were young, eager to learn and collect, and we loved Holland and Dutch drawings," Mrs. Abrams said.

The art was less widely collected at the time, and Abrams said she and her husband were able to buy major pieces for reasonable prices.

"They were plentiful and there wasn't much competition," she said. "If you went to a Dutch drawings auction, there would be a handful of people around the table...It was a very underestimated area of artistry at that time."

The Abrams have shared their collection with Harvard for almost as long as they have owned it.

"They've been very generous lenders to our museum and they've been generous with having students and scholars to their house," said Robinson.

"It just became part of a way of life for us," Mrs. Abrams said. She said virtually every Harvard graduate student and scholar studying the topic has visited their home and seen the collection at one time or another.

"They [the visitors] were part of our house, our way of living," she said. "They spent days with us sometimes."

Robinson--who says he was inspired to specialize in 17th century Dutch drawings after seeing the Abrams' collection--organized an exhibition of 65 of the Abrams' drawings in 1991, and the drawings in the show have been on deposit at the Fogg ever since. The Abrams have also given around 100 other drawings to Harvard throughout their collecting career.

Now, Mrs. Abrams said, they are ready to give up the collection.

"We were talking about it for at least five years, every night," she said. "This was a long, well thought-out process."

And after spending over forty years sharing their art with the University, Harvard seemed like the logical place to give the works.

"Where else is there a better teaching institution that also has a museum that's used for teaching purposes?" Mrs. Abrams said.

She said they timed the gift in part to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the date when Robinson first came to see their collection. Robinson's curator post will now be known as the Maida and George Abrams curator of drawings.

Mr. Abrams also serves on the Visiting Committee and the Collections Committee of Harvard University Art Museums, where he is chair of the Subcommittee for Drawings.

During his time at Harvard, he was Managing Editor of The Crimson and was involved in the infamous prank when Crimson editors stole the Harvard Lampoon's ibis and presented it to a visiting Soviet diplomat.

Today, he is a corporate lawyer and lives in the Boston area.

Mrs. Adams is president and director of Very Special Arts, Massachusetts, an organization which provides access to art to Massachusetts residents with special needs.