Building a Valuable Collection

An Essay by MOA Director Campbell Gray

The file note dated May 5, 1909, declares “G.H. Brimhall reported the donation to the university of a painting, “The Old Sycamore Tree” painted by John Hafen and valued at $1,000, donated by J. Wm. Knight. This would form the beginning of an Art Gallery in the University.” This year, the BYU Museum of Art celebrates the centenary anniversary of the founding of the BYU art collection. This is a remarkable moment in the life of the university. After formally accepting this gift, and with it the intention to form “an Art Gallery,” it is difficult to determine how earnestly the university worked to build the collection and create a place for its protection and exhibition. But a couple of statistics are significant: 1. The BYU Museum of Art collection currently stands at over 17,200 works of art; and 2. The BYU Museum of Art, now 16 years old, is an elegant, substantial facility with state-of-the-art climate and security systems as well as excellent exhibition and education areas. It is also the highest-attended university art museum in the country. Whether strategically developed in its first eight decades or not, (although it has been since the museum opened) BYU has accumulated a wonderful collection of American and religious art, which is now housed and presented in an equally wonderful facility.

There is an immediate paradox when one considers the nature and intention of this first formal gift of a work of art to BYU. BYU was inaugurated in 1875. This gift was presented 34 years later in 1909. Are we saying that no other gift of a work of art was given to BYU before this time? It is not beyond possibility that this is the case, but a sense of the arts and of culture generally had been promoted liberally within Mormon society since the formation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1830. Indeed John Hafen and four other artists, Lorus Pratt, John B. Fairbanks, Edwin Evans and Herman Haag were financed by the church in 1890 and 1891 to study painting in Paris, specifically to prepare to make important works of art for church purposes in Salt Lake City. By this date other Mormon artists from Salt Lake City had already either arrived or had spent time in Paris at their own expense gaining heightened capacity for visual artistic expression. Given this awareness and commitment in the community, it is hard to believe that the walls Brigham Young Academy, and later BYU were not “decorated” with works of art in the spirit of this broad culture of artistic appreciation. What is it within this particular gift that has the power to formally begin “an Art Gallery in the University”?

While the documentation of the event demonstrates that there is formal agreement between the donor and the university that this work will begin the collection, I believe that the power of the act to begin the collection is held in certain qualities within the work and that these qualities are at least in part recognized by donor and receiver. I also believe that understanding these qualities helps us to obtain understanding of the nature of building art collections and also of their social value.

Let’s consider John Hafen’s lovely painting of “The Sycamore Tree,” painted in 1908, a year before its presentation by J. William Knight, son of Jesse Knight, as a gift to BYU. The painting articulates a sense of summer light and warmth. An old tree in full foliage, angled over and obviously drawing from the abundant flow of a river, casts a comforting shadow over a peaceful agrarian scene. And this tree, which is boldly dominant in the work with its more slender trunk standing upright and the heavier trunk angled right across and through the painting, seems to represent on the one hand, the natural living forms that predate and temper the process of cultivation, and on the other the stalwart and tenacious perseverance required by early farmers to take hold of and harvest from the land. Clearly this is a satisfying pastoral image that takes the mind out of the office and into the lazy bucolic days of summer reverie. It is also a painting that provides worthwhile metaphors for some valuable human principles.

At first then, we might conclude that this relaxing and quite beautiful work of art provides generally what we might want to see in a work of art: it has warmth and beauty within it; we can recognize its elements and its “story,” and we find ourselves increased in our understanding of our environment; it inspires positive reflections, and through visual metaphor, it stimulates awareness of some valuable human virtues. Thus, this work will lift the environment in which it is placed and at the same time, lift the eyes of those who see it, encouraging loftier and more virtuous thoughts within them – a noble and worthy wish for the tender, developing minds of university students. But if these are the only principles that are at the foundation of its power to begin the collection, I still struggle to see what makes this work stand out so boldly from the others that I imagine were given to BYU before this time. I think we need to “look” a little more deeply at the work.

For John Hafen to be selected as an art missionary for the church, at least two conditions already existed: 1. His capacity as an artist was sufficiently proven; and 2. He was considered to be sufficiently teachable to be able to acquire the new methods and philosophies that he would experience overseas. So he and his similarly qualified colleagues were sent to Paris to study art. At the time that Hafen, Pratt and Fairbanks were set apart for their missions, they were told to avoid trouble, but encouraged to “see everything on earth that you can.” After spending a little time in London on the way, the missionaries arrived in Paris and enrolled in the Julian Academy, which Hafen stated “had the greatest reputation of any in the world at the time.” Study at the French academies at the time was conservative with emphasis placed on drawing and the meticulous rendering of form. It was these skills the artists sought. But by 1890 when the missionaries arrived, the Paris art world was in the throes of a major transformation.

Only 16 years earlier a group of painters, including Paul Cezanne, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, whose methods and philosophies were grounded in the French realism of the Barbizon School, exhibited together as an act of independence from the state-funded salons. The important rebellious act, though, was that this exhibition displayed a new method of painting that was apparently quickly and carelessly produced with bold brushstrokes of almost pure color. The critics generally attacked the exhibition; and one critic, Louis Leroy, derisively dubbed the exhibition “impressionist.” Seven more Impressionist exhibitions were held between 1876 and 1886, by which time the message of these events, the works they presented, and the new artistic methods and philosophies they introduced, had overcome the lag-time of distance and had reached overseas. By 1890 artists from the USA were coming to Paris in large numbers, some to attend the academies and others to absorb Impressionism. The influence of the French landscape and the liberating and responsive painting methods of Impressionism had a deep affect upon the artist missionaries, and they came home with a personal commitment to Impressionism. The important fact though, is that after arriving home, the church commissioned these artists to undertake projects knowing of their commitment to Impressionism, and it accepted these new, light-filled and apparently quickly painted images as satisfying the commissions.

So we return to Hafen’s “… Sycamore Tree,” and in doing so, it is important to lose our 21st century eyes that now are lulled into warm reverie by this beautiful scene, painted in a method we have come to describe as “traditional,” meaning, among other things: conservative, safe, recognizable, pleasant. It is important to see the work in its moment. This work was painted in the Impressionist style, as it might be applied to a corner of the Utah landscape, only a few short years after Hafen returned from Paris. t was purchased and donated to the university within months of its completion. It represented a radical shift in the history of art (that was still unfolding) and brought with it a model of expression and thought that was new and challenging to the Utah community. Thus, I propose that this work, above all others that might have been given to the university before it, contained skill, content, theory, history and aesthetics to a sufficiently sophisticated level that it was socially relevant and influential – even provocative – in its day and educationally important for the same reasons for the decades to come. I also propose that both J. William Knight and the university were able to recognize these qualities at least in part, sufficient to declare ceremoniously, that this work will begin “an Art Gallery in the University”.

As the collection has progressed, it has largely followed the same principles. Individual works were added here and there and most of them were important historical and educational objects. When Dr. Herald R. Clark negotiated the significant purchase of the Maynard Dixon paintings in 1937 and then gave them to BYU, he recognized work that was “touching,” that spoke to a special and unique dimension of Southwestern USA landscape, society, and culture. He saw within these works contemporary discourse and profound painting method that would challenge assumptions about the region and its society, not only for the residents of the region, but for the nation and its attitudes to westward development and broader concerns of social framing. In making the profoundly important decision to acquire these 85 significant works with family money, and then to give them to the university, at least two important developments occurred: 1. BYU received a social, historical and artistic document that was stunningly valuable in educational terms; and 2. In light of the individual works that had been acquired before this date, BYU received a “collection” and its consciousness as “collector” was thrust to the fore.

Further important works were acquired through the years leading up to the most miraculous and profound acquisition of works in 1959. Mahonri Young, who was educated as an artist firstly in Salt Lake City and thereafter in New York City and Paris, had recently passed away in 1957. His family, with strong ties to Salt Lake City and the church, negotiated with BYU for the combination gift and purchase of Mahonri’s collection of works of art. Thus BYU received this collection. But the remarkable aspect to this story is that this collection had first been formed by the nationally significant east coast Impressionist artist J. Alden Weir who, upon his death in 1919, had bequeathed a large part of it to his daughter Dorothy. Mahonri married Dorothy in 1931 and then in 1947 Dorothy passed away leaving this collection, which had continued to increase, to Mahonri. Mahonri, then, inherited a significant collection of his father-in-law’s (J. Alden’s) works, the works of J. Alden’s peers, and many European and American works he admired including Rembrandt and Dűrer etchings. By the time the collection came to Mahonri, it also included works by his late wife Dorothy and others she admired. Add to this wonderful foundation a large number of works by Mahonri Young, and BYU received a substantial number of works of art, more than 12,000 of which were deposited in the BYU art collection. This collection still forms the foundation of the museum’s collection and of its collection policies, and it contains works of profound historical and educational value.

Steadily, the collection continued to increase which fact, along with the loss of a significant number of works during a dark period in its history (roughly between 1970 and 1985 when works left the collection due to a multitude of errors and deceits), brought pressure upon the necessity of establishing an art museum. With these conditions as context Dr. James Mason, Dean of the College of Fine Arts and Communications from 1982-1993, negotiated the concept of an art museum with the university leadership. With BYU leadership support, approval was given from the BYU Board of Trustees to raise the funds and build the museum on condition that no tithing funds would be used in its construction, maintenance and operation. In October 1993, the 102,000-square-foot state-of-the-art museum was opened. The collection now had a safe home and a place for its display.

Soon after opening, effort was given by museum personnel to make a conceptual audit of the collection in order to define it and establish the museum’s collection policy. Rather than building a comprehensive collection with a policy to acquire works from throughout the history of Western art as well as representative examples of works from all of the non-Western cultures of the world, it was determined that the collection policy should build upon the character of the collection as it stood and establish a specialized scholarly endeavor. Thus with substantial roots in the history of American art and with some good religious works in the collection (and given the unique character and mission of BYU), it was determined that the BYU Museum of Art collection should have two primary foci: the History of American art, and religious art, which would not serve as a historical document but as a resource that explores the faith and discourses of the Judeo-Christian tradition. At the center of its purpose, the collection acquires works of art that will be strongly educational with high a expectation for value in scholarly research and publication, as well as exhibition. These conditions accord perfectly with the principles and values inherent in the original gift of Hafen’s “ … Sycamore Tree”.

The BYU art collection is built now, on the research and analysis of five excellent curators, each one specializing in a dimension that underpins the two primary foci. Their specializations are as follows: religious art, American art, Southwest American art, contemporary art, and photography. Given our geographical, social, and cultural context, each one of these specializations is essential in building the kind of collection that will communicate effectively with the museum’s communities of audiences, and that will provide a challenging and rewarding educational experience. Since the museum has been formed, miracles of collecting have continued to unfold. Works usually considered impossible to acquire have been and continue to be obtained and the resources necessary for their acquisition have come to the museum, wholly from individuals who have become inspired by the museum’s mission and effects. Some of the stories of these acquisitions are recorded elsewhere in this document. However I wish to make these closing remarks:

The BYU Museum of Art is helped by forces which, and by people who, apprehend the important role that significant works of art and works of exhibition play in challenging and influencing the mind, the heart and the soul of each viewer. They recognize that there is a power within these forms that causes viewers to ask important questions of themselves in which values, knowledge, appreciation of others, and spiritual understanding are at the center. By responding to these questions and challenges, viewers become more reflective, inquiring, intelligent and compassionate beings. With profound awareness of those wonderful forces and people who help us, there are many times when I feel that our great successes occur regardless of our own efforts in the museum. I extend my deepest and most sincere gratitude to the generosity extended to us by these kind beings without whom a collection would have never begun and without whom it would not be progressing as such a valuable resource.