A Gift of Love: The Haseltine Collection of Pacific Northwest Art

"A GIFT OF LOVE" by Richard C. Paulin, Director "ALL ART IS LOVE" by Virginia Hazeltine Funding for this catalogue made possible to the Museum by the Edna Pearl Horton Endowment Bequest. For over a decade Virginia Haseltine has been a dedicated patroness and purposeful supporter of artists and craftspeople throughout the Northwest. Indeed, she alone is a pioneer in Oregon in reference to private and public financ ial patronage of the visual arts, as demonstrated by her invitation in 1966 to serve as a member of former Governor Hatfield's Planning Council on the Arts and Humanities from which the Oregon Arts Commission was created . Her complete involvement with this university and in particular the Museum of Art is almost legendary and dates back to 1955 when she organized a busload of Po rtland friends and alumni of this university for a combined Eugene/Portland gala and dinner at the museum to engender greater statewide interest and support. In the spring of 1964, Virgini a-- with Rolf Klep (distinguished artist, alumnus and art patron) and his dear late wife, Alice, toured the state pleading the cause of the visual arts in Oregon and in particular this art museum and its need for greater statewide assistance . A positive outcome was the establishment of this museum's Statewide Services Program, which received great impetus and support from Virginia in its formulative stages . Her initial Contemporary Northwest Collection was the first traveling exhibition organized and toured by Statewide Services throughout Oregon, thus, providing our first much needed statewide outreach program . From 1972 through 1974 over one hundred ninety-four traveling exhibitions and services and forty-one artist workshops were provided free or at nominal cost by this outstanding museum service throughout Oregon . Unique not only in the Northwest, our Statewide Services is a national model in providing visual art experiences to interested residents of this state and beyond. Yet another noteworthy beginning was the forll)Uiation of the Friends of the Museum, our supportive right arm. Virginia helped organize and served on its fi rst Board of Governors. The " Haseltine Collection" of three hundred ninety-three works, encompassing nearly every medium in the contemporary visual arts scene, forms the nucleus of what is now this museum's second largest collection numbering over nineteen hundred works of contemporary Northwest art and crafts. This nucleus collection and this exhibition were not gathered together by Virginia to present a definitive compendium of all present and past contemporary Northwest artists. They are, rather, evidence of one person's personal vision to stimulate and create a cultural renaissance of patronage through purchase of creative endeavors by gifted artists and draftspeople in Oregon and the Northwest. This endowed collection and exhibition then , is indeed A GIFT OF LOVE -- a major gift assembled and given to this museum and university in the dawn of its Centennial celebration .

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Museum of Art, University of Oregon

1975

Paulin, Richard Calkins