The Great Purge
Here is a story of true detective work – or serendipity, at least.
A couple of weeks ago when we were first inquiring with CSU about borrowing the artworks in their collection, the facilities manager gave a couple of us access to the artworks held in the CSU’s storage. In there we discovered, among many interesting pieces, one large painting that was really striking to me, but had no name, date or title attached to it… I’ll return to this in a minute.
While digging round and photographing works we learned from the manager that we indeed would not be able to borrow anything for our exhibition in April – largely for insurance reasons. BUT, it was still interesting to see art that the CSU had collected! We learned a bit of back story of how art gets into the CSU collection and how certain works were curated to be on public display.
Apparently, all the works in the CSU are by students and were often purchased by the CSU for the purpose of being on display there. As many art students hold their senior shows in the CSU gallery, this made it easy for the CSU staff to view the art and make purchases. So, student artworks are almost always purchased, not donated, and would go on rotation for display.
There is currently no catalogue system and no formalized curator to the artworks, so the opportunities for art history or museum studies student interns are vast – anyone interested?
More about the storage area: back in the day, before the time of the current CSU facilities manager and before the latest renovation to the student union, the storage room was FULL of artwork: sculptures, paintings, prints, drawings, photographs – everything you could imagine and mostly art by former students. It had been collected over the history of MSU.
Eventually the collection became too large and unmanageable – they say it filled the entire storage room, floor to ceiling, and artworks were not cared for or protected. With the new renovations and general facelift of the CSU, shrinking storage space and prescribed display space, what ensued was “The Great Purge.” The CSU literally purged most of the art: it was offered up for people to take home or purchase. Some works found a new home, some were tossed in the garbage.
The story is shocking and a little sad, but all a part of collecting. There comes a time in the history of every museum, gallery, or in this case, school, to release items. The most unfortunate part, I think, is that we’ll never know what was in that storage closet.
The art historian in me regrets the seeming careless disposal of art and the great big question mark it leaves behind. The value of the artwork probably didn’t (and doesn’t) extend beyond the university – it’s valuable not because these former students became famous, but because its part of our history as a campus. That’s what’s unfortunate about “The Purge.”
Ok, here’s where the really interesting part happens: the same day we viewed the stored artworks at the CSU, I heard about a group of paintings that had been recently donated to a local thrift store, VINE Home Thrift. I know a few people who work there, and they knew I’d be interested in something like this.
Anyway, I decided to go check out these artworks – they had told me that the paintings were donated to VINE by a current (or maybe former) VINE board member, and the paintings had a connection to MSU and dated from the 1960s.
As soon as I walked in to the store, I spotted them: two large paintings in brown, black, and red, very striking, and very 1960s and kind of strange. They were canvas paintings stretched over frames that were oddly shaped, which added to the effect. The cool thing was, these two paintings were originally a triad, and I had just seen the third painting in the CSU storage earlier that day!
Next to the artworks at VINE there was a short description about the paintings: they were made in 1965 by Arnoldus J. Gruter. Included with the paintings was a letter of authentication and they were being sold for $600 each. The painting that is in the CSU storage was donated to MSU a while ago, probably by the same woman who was donated the other two to VINE right now.
But who is Arnoldus J. Gruter? What's his MSU connection? His painting was lucky to survive the "Great Purge," but will it ever be reunited with the other two? We shall see… next time!
