Art collection will go to Colby College

WATERVILLE, Maine – Colby College will receive a private art collection valued at $100 million that includes works by such greats as Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper and Georgia O’Keeffe.

The gift of 500 paintings, prints and sculptures from Colby supporters Peter H. and Paula Crane Lunder represents one of the most important collections of American art ever to be donated to a liberal arts college, said Colby President William D. Adams.

“It is hands-down one of the top private collections of American art anywhere,” said Elizabeth Broun, director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

The 24,000-square-foot Colby Museum of Art, which was founded in 1959 and features a collection of more than 5,500 works focusing on American and contemporary art, will undergo an expansion to accommodate the gift from the Lunders.

The permanent wing for the collection will be completed in 2013, but the museum will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2009 by exhibiting about 200 works from the collection.

Museum director Sharon Corwin said the collection includes 201 etchings and lithographs by James McNeill Whistler. It also includes numerous paintings by key American masters from both the 19th and 20th centuries, she said.