Art-Loving Alumni Lend Paintings To Exhibit

NEW YORK -- Sandra Kraskin, the director of the Sidney Mishkin Gallery at Baruch College of the City University of New York, had little idea what a treasure trove she would find when she began searching for art owned by alumni for an exhibit opening Friday.

The show of 20th-century works called "Alumni Collect," which runs through Dec. 12 at the gallery on East 22nd Street, includes works by Picasso, Miro, Matisse, Marsden Hartley, Willem de Kooning, Henry Moore and Louise Nevelson, among others, on loan from such alumni as Donald Marron, the chairman of Paine Webber; and George Weissman, the former chairman of Philip Morris and of Lincoln Center.

"Baruch is known as a business school and I expected Baruch alumni to be captains of industry and C.E.O.'s of major corporations, but I was very surprised that they were so interested in art, and some have major collections," Ms. Kraskin said.

Arranging the loans was not always easy. "Convincing people was sometimes difficult because I was taking things off their living-room walls or from over their dining-room tables and leaving big holes," she said. "In one case, we waited a few extra days, because someone was having a dinner party."

And what would dinner be without a masterpiece?

The New York Times - Chronicle
Tuesday, November 4, 1997

© 1997 Sidney Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College