Word: fogg
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While the Fogg has exhibited major Picassos (Guernica in 1941) and even some Impressionists, its curators have traditionally preferred to show things that don't get attention outside of New York. Among other things, Harvard's constituency has come to expect not only expensive loan exhibits from museums world-wide, but also 25 shows or more per year--something public museums simply cannot afford. This is the university museum's niche, observes Cohn, and it has a responsibility to show obscure exhibits...
...objects also gives Harvard greater authorship over the exhibits than one would normally find in public museums. Often this approach alienates the public, but that need not be the case with intelligent work, suggests Curator of Drawings William Robinson. On the contrary, the most perfect exhibit ever at the Fogg, he says, was a collection of landscapes by Dutch master Jacob van Ruisdael that was shown in 1982. "Director Seymour Slive successfully combined a major artist's unfamiliar, though brilliant, work with exemplary scholarship, and 2,500 people came on a single afternoon...
...perception is somewhat understandable since most of Harvard's 150,000 objects are seldom displayed and then only for short periods. They are the prints and drawings, susceptible to light damage and therefore hidden away like family jewels in the Mongan Center on the ground floor of the Fogg. They constitute the bulk of the museums' collection and are the real treasures visitors must...
Many of those collections rank among the best in the America if not the world, and have given Harvard museums the status they currently enjoy. From Europe, the Fogg logs over 60,000 prints, including over 300 by Durer, 200 by Rembrandt and another 300 by Goya. Its watercolors by Blake are unrivaled outside England, while its drawings from Gericault and David are the most comprehensive collections outside France...
Once again, it was the generosity and vision of Forbes and Sachs that is largely responsible for the scope and depth of those collections. Forbes set the standard when he donated important Italian works in 1898 which later grew into the most important collection of its kind. Today, the Fogg continues to be especially strong in pre-Raphaelite and 19th century French paintings, featuring the largest holdings of Ingres and Moreau outside of France...