The gifts and promised gifts on view in Building a Legacy will enhance every area of the Chrysler collection. Donors have greatly enriched the Museum’s extensive and outstanding holdings of glass artwork with objects by renowned glass artists like Debora Moore and Ginny Ruffner, both new to the Chrysler collection. Other works by artists like Karl Harron and Matt Eskuche add exciting new directions to the collection by showcasing fascinating and unique glassworking techniques. Yet other gifts of glass include works by Dale Chihuly, Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová and Lino Tagliapietra, which expand the Museum’s collection of works by these notable masters of glass.

In the area of European and American paintings, works like the dazzling Portrait of a Young Man in Red Riding Habit by the 17th-century painter Wybrand de Geest and John Leslie Breck’s Springtime fill gaps in the Museum’s holdings in Dutch portraiture and American Impressionism. Other recent gifts like a late portrait by Pierre-Auguste Renoir add depth to the Chrysler’s holdings of the artist, which include two paintings, sculpture and works on paper by the French Impressionist. Works recently given to the Museum by American artists Susan Watkins and George Luks enhance the caliber of the holdings of these artists and allow for a fuller representation of their artistic contributions.

As the Chrysler looks toward its next fifty years, the gifts and promised gifts of art on view in this exhibition will serve as the foundation for the institution’s mission to serve as a site of education and focal point for community dialogue.

This exhibition is organized by the Chrysler Museum of Art.