Selections from the Collection focuses on the prints and drawings that dominate the Bell Gallery collection and represent its greatest strength. The exhibition aims to provide an overview of the collection’s prints and drawings rather than to arrange them according to specific subject matter, conceptual framework, or geographic location. Its organizational principle is governed by the aesthetic and historical merit of the artworks, but also follows a chronological order, dividing the works loosely into three main sections: old master, modern, and contemporary.

Named in memory of a member of the Brown University class of 1954, the David Winton Bell Gallery opened in 1971. The Gallery’s permanent collection, derived primarily from gifts, numbers more than 4,000 objects in all media--ranging from painting and sculpture to prints, drawings and photographs--that span the period from the sixteenth century to the present. However, the majority of the collection consists of works on paper, including some significant prints and drawings by old masters, including Caracci, Durer, Rembrandt, and Tiepolo; eighteenth- and nineteenth-century masters such as Blake, Cezanne, Daumier, Degas, Delacroix, Hogarth, Goya, Manet, and Whistler; and modern and contemporary artists, Albers, Beckmann, Calder, Grosz, Hopper, Matisse, Miro, Motherwell, Picasso, Rivera, Serra, Stella, and Warhol, among many others. A large portion of these works are featured in the current exhibition.

In addition, the Bell Gallery has an extensive photography collection, including significant holdings of the works of Berenice Abbott, Harry Callahan, Walker Evans, and Aaron Siskind, and a large number of black-and-white photographs from the 1970s and 1980s by Danny Lyon, Ralph Gibson, and Larry Clark. Because of its specific profile and breadth, the photography collection will be shown separately at a later date.

With Selections, the Gallery continues its tradition of introducing to the general public the various aspects of its holdings. Some of the past exhibitions that incorporated artworks from the permanent collection, on either a general basis or according to a specific theme, include: Recent Acquisitions (1979 and 1982); Frank Stella: The Prints (1981); From the Permanent Collection: European Etchings of the Nineteenth Century (1985); Jules Olitski at Brown University (1991), Callahan in New England (1994); British Prints from Steinberg Collection (1996); and The Visionary Architecture of Brodsky and Utkin (1996). In addition, the Gallery uses the foyer space of the List Art Center for mounting small-scale, rotating exhibitions of artworks from the permanent collection: Berenice Abbott: New York Series; Dorothy Norman; Donald Sultan: Dominoes; and Ten Years after Perestroika: Russian Prints from Departure from Moscow Portfolio.

In conjunction with the exhibition, the Gallery will organize Collection Focus— informal discussions led by Brown faculty members from the Department of History of Art and Architecture. The discussions will be held in the Gallery on Thursday evenings at 5:30 p.m. The first one, led by Evelyn Lincoln, will occur on April 19, and the second, led by Kermit Champa, on May 17. In addition, a Gallery tour will be held during Commencement Weekend, on Saturday, May 26, at 1:00 p.m.

During the summer (June 9-July 8), Selections will be followed by a small-scale exhibition in the List Art Center foyer that will present recent acquisitions of works by local artists. This show will occur in conjunction with the regular Bell Gallery summer exhibition dedicated to New England artists.