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‘A transformational gift’ John Driscoll American Drawings Collection given to Palmer Museum

Photos of artwork courtesy of The Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State Above is “Landscape,” circa 1865, a graphite and gouache on paper, 11-by-17 inches, by William Trost Richards (1833-1905). It is part of the John Driscoll American Drawings Collection.

From Mirror reports

UNIVERSITY PARK — Penn State alumnus Dr. John P. Driscoll, a New York City art dealer, has donated a “transformational gift” of 140 American works on paper to The Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State, a free-admission arts resource for the university and central Pennsylvania.

The gift is described by museum Director Erin M. Coe as “priceless” and as an “expansive gift, one of the most important in the 47-year history of the University’s art museum, and establishes a significant American drawings collection at the Palmer Museum of Art.”

The John Driscoll American Drawings Collection spans more than 150 years of American art history from 1795 to 1950, and in many ways, reflects the wide-ranging scholarly and collecting interests of its namesake.

Highlights of the collection include a rare and early charcoal sketch by the neoclassical painter John Vanderlyn, important Hudson River School drawings by Jasper Francis Cropsey, Sanford Robinson Gifford, David Johnson, Jervis McEntee and William Trost Richards, as well as city and architectural scenes by the most accomplished artists of the 19th century.

Works on paper by women artists and a rare sketchbook by Jane Peterson, as well as Native American and western subjects, are well represented in the collection, which Driscoll started amassing in the 1970s.

“One of the watercolors in the gift, a rooftop scene by Thomas Anshutz, is featured in the current exhibition ‘From the Rooftops: John Sloan and the Art of a New Urban Space’ on view until May 12,” Coe said. “We are hoping to put a selection of works from this gift on view in one of the galleries in 2020.”

Additional important works by Edwin Austin Abbey, Kenyon Cox, Arthur B. Davies and Charles Hawthorne traverse the late 19th and early 20th century and lead into an important group of six drawings done between 1908 and 1934 by the early American modernist Marsden Hartley.

Driscoll’s gift also includes oil paintings by Arthur B. Davies, John Francis, William Sidney Mount and Russell Smith, as well as the only extant complete set of Marsden Hartley’s 1923 “Berlin Prints.”

“This gift of significant drawings, watercolors and sketchbooks wonderfully complements and greatly enhances the museum’s extensive collection of 19th-and early 20th-century American painting,” said Coe. “As an integral part of a teaching museum embedded in a tier-one research university, the collection will become an important resource promoting new scholarship and research that fosters the study of American art for generations to come.”

Driscoll, who earned a master’s degree as well as Ph.D. in art history from Penn State, is a scholar, collector, gardener and art dealer based in New York City. His involvement with Penn State’s university art museum dates back nearly 50 years to the summer of 1972, when he began working at the museum as a graduate assistant. In 1976, he became the museum’s first official registrar.

In late 1978, Driscoll left Penn State for a position as curator of the William H. Lane Foundation in Massachusetts, followed by a guest curatorial post at the Worcester Art Museum before establishing an art gallery in Boston and then, acquiring Babcock Galleries, New York, in 1987. In 2012, he renamed the business Driscoll Babcock. This year marks the gallery’s 167th year, making it New York’s oldest art gallery.

“My life in the world of aesthetic and scholarly concerns came into sharp focus while studying art history and working in the Museum of Art at Penn State,” said Driscoll in a news release. “I have always been appreciative of those experiences and the wonderful people with whom I had, and continue to have, the opportunity to work and grow. My wish is that my continuing association with the Palmer Museum of Art be an expression of my appreciation and that it will have a continuing beneficial effect for students and visitors to the University and the museum.”

Driscoll’s philanthropy has taken many forms since his time at Penn State. His past gifts of art to the Palmer include major paintings by Benjamin West, Jacob Eichholtz, Tompkins Harrison Matteson and Sanford Robinson Gifford; a large group of prints, drawings, and paintings by American modernist Arthur B. Davies; contemporary works by Abe Ajay, Marylyn Dintenfass, Alan Gussow, Don Nice and Jenny Morgan; and notable ceramics.

“John Driscoll has been a longtime supporter and friend of the museum decades before this historic gift. Since 1994, he has donated thirty-eight works of art to the museum. Several of these gifts — including paintings by Benjamin West, Robert Weir, Sanford Robinson Gifford and Arthur B. Davies — are presently on display in our American art galleries. In November John reached out to me to discuss a major gift of his American drawings collection to the museum and naturally I was both astounded and excited. He felt it was time to part with his drawing collection, as he wants to assist the museum in developing a strong academic base for study and to hopefully inspire others to give to the museum,” Coe said.

Driscoll has written extensively on American art and has been the curator, co-curator, or a contributor to exhibitions that have traveled to more than 20 leading museums including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, National Academy of Design, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the National Gallery of Art. Driscoll serves on the Advisory Board of the Palmer Museum of Art, has twice been its chair, is a past member of The Board and The Council of the National Academy of Design and is currently on the Visiting Committee, Department of Drawings and Prints, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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