Foreword

The initial exhibition of the La Vera Pohl Collection in Lawrence’s new visual

arts center and the publication of this catalog are exciting moments in the life

of the college for several reasons.  They mark both a culmination of our recent

initiatives to enhance and promote the fine arts for the campus and northeast

Wisconsin communities and an introduction of Lawrence into the small company

of undergraduate colleges with first-rate art exhibition programs.  The display

of the Pohl Collection celebrates and inaugurates the opening of the art

center even as it augurs a rich and vital future of other exhibits in the years

ahead.

Eight years ago, no one at Lawrence knew or knew of La Vera Pohl. 

When we learned in the fall of 1981 that the college was the beneficiary

of her bequest of her “books and library pictures and drawing collection,”

our excitement was tempered by our curiosity.  As our curiosity was

satisfied, our excitement heightened.  Mrs. Pohl had willed her art

collection to Milwaukee-Downer College, which had become a part of

Lawrence in 1964.  Although she had no formal affiliation with Downer-she

was described to us only as a friend to the college-she evidently considered

it an institution that would care for and use her collection properly and

imaginatively.  As this catalog and the exhibition indicate, her confidence

has been more than justified.

Hans Thuar, Portrait of La Vera Pohl, 1926

In the early months of 1982, we first learned of the nature and magnitude of

the collection through the work of the late Allan McNab, former director of the

Chicago Art Institute, who examined the works on our behalf.  In November

1981, the collection of 220 artworks and a small library of art books arrived at

the college and were placed in the Seeley G. Mudd Library.  They remained

there until the completion of the art center in January of this year.

The Pohl Collection is, by all accounts, a distinguished one and provides the Lawrence permanent collection with a distinctive focus.  Most of the pieces are done on paper-a medium that we intended to be the center piece of our holdings-and represents works by a number of the most significant figures in-and related to-German Expressionism.  These prints and paintings were collected over a period of years by Mrs. Pohl while she was studying and working in Germany and Italy.  An accomplished artist herself, she knew many of the artists whose works she collected.  Since 1982, individual works in the collection have caught the attention of museum directors and art historians and several have been exhibited in various shows in the past few years.  With this exhibition, they appear together in public for the first time.

For the college, the principal significance of these works is their accessibility to our students.  Like other items in the permanent collection-which include prints, drawings, and paintings in a variety of media, as well as sculpture- the Pohl Collection will afford students the opportunity to see and work with original works of art in the furtherance of their liberal education.  Art and art history students will be the most immediate beneficiaries of this opportunity, to be sure, but our intentions is to enable all Lawrence students to develop an appreciation of art during the course of their undergraduate education.  At the same time, we also believe that the college has a broader responsibility to share these resources with our community and with a wider array of lovers and students of art.

On behalf of the college, I want to express gratitude to the National Endowment for the Arts and the J. Paul Getty Trust for their grants for the conservation of these works and the production of this catalog, and to the many individuals, foundations, and corporations whose generosities have enabled Lawrence to construct its magnificent new home for the fine arts and to endow the academic and exhibition programs that it will house and sponsor.  Special and significant thanks go to their major commitments to this project and for enhancing the study, creation, and appreciation of art for this and future generations of students and friends of Lawrence.

Richard Warch

President, Lawrence University

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