Herb & Dorothy 50X50

(Megumi Sasaki, 2013, 87 min.)

Friday, Nov. 8 & Saturday, Nov. 9 - 5:30 & 7:30 p.m.

On Saturday, Nov. 9, featured artist (and Hallwalls co-founder) Charles Clough will conduct a live Q&A with audiences following both the 5:30 and 7:30 screenings of the new documentary film about the Vogels at the Dipson Amherst Theatre. Clough—along with the film's director Megumi Sasaki and Albright Knox Art Gallery Chief Curator Douglas Dreishpoon—will also be present at the Amherst Theatre for a Q&A/Introduction in between the 5:30 and 7:30 screenings on Friday evening, November 8.

Developed as the follow-up film to Megumi Sasaki's earlier award-winning documentary Herb & Dorothy (2008) that moved millions of art-lovers worldwide, Herb & Dorothy 50X50 captures the last chapter of the Vogels' extraordinary life and their gift to the nation, raising various questions on art, and what it takes to support art in today's society.

In 2008, legendary art collectors Herb and Dorothy Vogel made an announcement that stunned the art world. Known and loved as a retired postal worker (Herb) and librarian (Dorothy) who built a world-class art collection on their humble salaries, the Vogels launched a national gift project with the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington DC that would constitute one of the largest gifts in the history of American art: to give a total of 2,500 artworks to museums in all fifty states. This came sixteen years after the Vogels had transferred their entire collection to NGA, the majority as a gift, making headlines in 1992. During those years at the NGA, the collection had grown to nearly 5,000 pieces, too large for any one museum to contain.

As a solution, a national gift project titled The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States was conceived. Though their collection was now worth millions of dollars, the couple did not sell a single piece, instead giving fifty works to one museum in every state. Having worked their whole lives as civil servants, their wish was to give back to the people of the United States. A little over one year ago, on July 22, 2012, Dorothy declared their collection closed after the passing of her husband Herb. Dorothy works to create a living tribute to their partnership, the collection they created together, and the overwhelmingly positive legacy they have left on the American art world for generations to come.


A still from the film: artist Charlie Clough (right) with the Vogels (left) in 2009 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, on the occasion of the major group exhibition The Pictures Generation: 1974-1984. This important exhibition featured works by 29 artists, including Hallwalls artists Clough, his fellow co-founder Robert Longo (whose drawing Untitled, from Men in the Cities, 1981, can be seen on the wall in the background between them), Nancy Dwyer (whose 1982 painting Yoga Woman is partially visible over Mrs. Vogel's shoulder), Cindy Sherman, and Michael Zwack.