Existing comment:
Modern American Realism:
The Sara Roby Foundation Collection:
The Sara Roby Foundation began collecting American art in the mid-1950s and over the next thirty years assembled a premier group of paintings and sculpture by the country's leading figurative artists. A painter herself, Roby sought out art broadly defined as realist and artists concerned with principles of form and design that she had learned as an art student, first in Philadelphia and later with Reginald Marsh and Kenneth Hayes Miller in New York. The resulting collection captures both the optimism and the apprehension of the years following World War II. Many of the works are poignantly human, others whimsical. Still others challenge us to decipher meanings embedded in complex sometimes enigmatic scenes.
In 1985, Mrs. Roby and her Foundation donated 175 paintings, drawings, and sculpture to the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The Museum again thanks the Sara Roby Foundation for the gift of this extraordinary collection and for continuing to support museum programs that advance the understanding of American realist art. |