Lebanon Valley Colleges Arnold Gallery Gifted 45 19th-Century Paintings
Vesell Family, Longtime Gallery Supporters, Donate Landscape Paintings To Establish The Vesell Family Collection
August 28, 2020
The Suzanne H. Arnold Art Gallery at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pa., recently received a major donation of 45 19th-century American landscape paintings from Hilary Peery Vesell, of Hershey. The paintings were donated in honor of her father, Dr. Elliot Vesell, who along with his wife, Kristen, was a generous patron of the gallery for many years and had loaned work for several gallery exhibitions, including William Trost Richards Land and Sea (2009) and Visions of Nature: Nineteenth-Century Women Landscape Artists (2011). Dr. Vesell served for 32 years as the founding chair of pharmacology at the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and 22 years as assistant dean of graduate studies at the Penn State College of Medicine. An Evan Pugh Professor, and later professor emeritus, he published more than 350 articles on pharmacogenomics and received many awards and honorary degrees, including an honorary degree from Penn State. Dr. Vesell edited several books and was a scholar of American art. His first publication on American art was written the summer between graduating from Harvard and starting Harvard Medical School. He wrote the introduction to the Life and Works of Thomas Cole (Harvard University Press). We are honored to add these paintings, now designated The Vesell Family Collection, from the Hudson River School to the collection of fine art at Lebanon Valley College, said Dr. Barbara McNulty, director of the Suzanne H. Arnold Art Gallery. The collection includes works by noted artists such as Julie Hart Beers, John William Casilear, Susie M. Barstow, and Charles Baum. We are excited that gallery visitors will be able to experience these historically significant paintings and that the paintings will become part of the immersive experience the gallery provides to the colleges students. Creative arts majors and minors will be able to conserve, research, and curate these works while learning museum standard professional practices. The Suzanne H. Arnold Art Gallery receives state arts funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
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