Colby, Community, and Connection
At the museum’s Summer Luncheon, the College celebrates two major gifts and honors artists and arts leaders
On a day dedicated to community, the Colby College Museum of Art hosted its annual Summer Luncheon on July 13 with a festive celebration of art, artists, and the College’s ongoing efforts to create access to art for all.
A cherished tradition since the museum’s inauguration in 1959, the Summer Luncheon brings together artists, patrons, curators, educators, and other community members, who gather for a day-long celebration of the museum’s mission, the contribution of artists, and the meaningful support of friends.
This year, the museum recognized Adam D. Weinberg, D.F.A. ’07, director emeritus of the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Sarah Workneh, former co-director of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and current co-executive director of Sky High Farm, a regenerative farm in the Hudson Valley, with the 2024 Jetté Award for Leadership in the Arts. Edith and Ellerton Jetté were early museum supporters, whose gift of art helped the museum become established.
The painter and printmaker Terry Winters of New York received the 2024 Cummings Award for Artistic Excellence, named after Willard Cummings, D.F.A. ’60, cofounder of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and an early champion of the Colby Museum. The award celebrates distinguished artists who are dedicated to their creative practices and who have made a positive impact on people’s lives through their artistic achievements and through advocacy, generosity, and community-building.
Giving thanks
During the celebration, President David A. Greene praised donors for two recent gifts that will help Colby achieve its goals of inspiring participation in the arts and creating everyday opportunities for students, faculty, staff, and others to interact with art in meaningful ways throughout the campus, including in buildings and along walking paths.
Maine philanthropists David and Barbara Roux donated a vertical bronze sculpture by the artist Henry Moore to the Colby Museum in honor of Peter Lunder ’56, D.F.A. ’98 and Life Trustee Paula Lunder, D.F.A. ’98. Nearly seven feet tall, Upright Motive No. 8, 1955-56, stands in a high-traffic spot near the museum, Art Department, and Grossman Hall, home of DavisConnects.
“Peter and Paula mean so much to so many of us, and they have taught so many of us so many things,” Greene said. “To know this was a gift from David and Barbara in honor of Peter and Paula makes it all the more special.”
In a statement, David Roux said, “Peter and Paula have been an inspiration to so many with their unflagging support of the arts, Colby College, and the communities where they live. Barb and I are thrilled to honor their legacy with this gift.”
Greene also expressed gratitude to Rob Radloff and Ann Beha, D.F.A. ’24, whose promised gift of 70 paintings, sculptures, photographs, and other artworks will be displayed inside academic and administrative buildings and community spaces, with many sculptures installed outdoors.
Radloff and Beha made their promised gift in honor of Barbara and Theodore “Ted” Alfond, as well as Greene. Avid and generous supporters of the College and numerous other institutions across the region, the Alfonds serve as life members of the Colby Museum Board of Governors.
The Rob Radloff and Ann Beha Collection at Colby will include important 20th-century paintings and sculptures by Arthur Dove, Beverly Pepper, Helen Frankenthaler, David Hockney, Mark di Suvero, and many others, Greene noted, thanking the donors for generosity and vision for an open-access art environment.
“They said, ‘We want to give you our art, and we want people to live with it the way we have lived with it our entire life. We want it where people will see it every day,’” Greene said.
Collectively, the gifts will help create a campus where art is everywhere, “so you are always literally bumping into it,” Greene said. “These gifts are so transformative for Colby and for the way we live our lives here, and I am so grateful to Rob and Ann and Dave and Barb.”
Mission in action
In welcoming the audience to the luncheon, Hilary Barnes Hoopes ’89, chair of the museum Board of Governors, spoke of the value of community and the mission of the museum. “The Colby Museum builds community by committing to access, invitation, and education,” she said. “The museum is about forging connections and relationships. The museum is about being a place that represents the complexities of the American experience and fosters a sense of belonging.”
Jacqueline Terrassa, the Carolyn Muzzy Director of the Colby Museum of Art, described the Summer Luncheon as “mission in action” and the museum as “a spiritual necessity.”
“Art is about what is deepest and most creative in us. It is also about connection,” she said. “Here at Colby, art is part of learning and living—a necessity for our individual and collective well-being and our short- and long-term future as a new generation of young people and our broader community, together, make a path forward.”
The sense of community was evident in the audience. Among those who attended were recent Colby honorary degree recipients Gov. Janet T. Mills, LL.D. ’24; arts administrator and community leader Márcia Minter, D.F.A. ’23, and her husband, the artist Daniel Minter, D.F.A. ’23; and poet Richard Blanco, D.F.A. ’14, vice chair of the Museum Board of Governors.
Also in attendance were past Jetté and Cummings award winners Bill Tsiaras ’68, an art collector who donated the Tsiaras Family Photography Collection to Colby in 2020; former museum director Sharon Corwin; former Colby President William D. Adams, Peter and Paula Lunder, and Passamaquoddy artist Jeremy Frey.
Each of those honored at the Summer Luncheon this year—Winters, Workneh, and Weinberg—has been part of the community for many years.
Amanda Lilleston, assistant professor of art and a printmaker, introduced Winters and described him as “a powerful influence on my own studio practice” and a pivotal influence on her students.
The Colby Museum holds the complete archive of prints by Winters. Numbering more than 300 works, the Winters Print Collection came to the Colby Museum in 2002 through a gift of the artist and Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE), and Winters has given one impression of each subsequent edition to the museum. His ongoing generosity allows the museum to continue to represent his print practice in its entirety.
Lilleston said the collection has informed her teaching practice. “In fact, and this might be news to him, but Terry Winters has been really my partner in teaching since I arrived in Colby’s Art Department in 2017. … For Colby students, who are ambitious, interdisciplinary thinkers, there’s no better exemplar of the transformative power of creative acts than the Winters’ Collection, with its ambitious, interdisciplinary, multi-technical scope.”
Winters said he was honored to receive the Cummings Award and join “the impressive list of recipients,” including Alex Katz, the award’s first winner. He thanked former museum director Hugh Gourley, who died in 2012, and Museum Board of Governor Emeriti Gabriella De Ferrari, Litt.D. ’08 for making the initial commitment that led to the museum acquiring the print collection. Over the years, he said, the Winters Print Collection has been featured in exhibitions and catalogs.
He also thanked Corwin, Terrassa, and head curator Elizabeth Finch. “Thanks also to the Lunders, truly remarkable people who exemplify all that I now associate as wholesome and good about Maine.”
In support of artists
This year, the museum selected two winners for Jetté Awards.
Daniel Bozhkov, an artist and faculty member at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, described Workneh as a visionary arts leader, who has dedicated her career to creating safe, supportive, and hopeful environments for artists. “She possesses the uncanny ability to anticipate when one needs support and to offer it generously and unequivocally,” he said.
Acknowledging that it gets harder every day to believe in options for change, Workneh said, “That is exactly what art is for” and why she was grateful for “working with artists on the intimidating experience of questioning the world as we see it, of describing things that are overlooked or marginalized, and moving forward with a scary hopefulness and a new way of being that is radical, joyful, and has always been full of love.”
Lunder Curator of American Art Sarah Humphreville worked with Weinberg at the Whitney, where she began as a curatorial intern and worked her way up to the position of senior curator assistant before coming to Colby two years ago. “Even as Adam thought about the museum’s future,” Humphreville said, noting Weinberg led Whitney’s move to a new building, “he never forgot its history, its commitment to living artists, and the people who were working with him to make that future possible.”
In his remarks, Weinberg recognized the artists in attendance, asking them to raise their hands to applause from others in the audience. “For all the buildings, all the funds, and all the foundations, the only reason the art exists is because of the makers,” he said.
He also recognized longtime museum volunteer Jean Bird, and he saluted Colby for its commitment to artists and reminded everyone in attendance of the importance of giving voice to artists. “This is one tough time, but art does, I believe, give us hope and … helps us believe in a future that is greater than the present we exist in. So fight for it.”
The morning art talk
In the morning at Given Auditorium, Terrassa hosted a discussion featuring Winters and the artist and professor Gladys Nilsson. A painter, Nilsson came to prominence in Chicago in the mid-1960s, and in 1973 she was among the first women to have a solo exhibition at the Whitney. Her work is included in the Alive & Kicking exhibition currently in the Joan Dignam Schmaltz Gallery of Art at the Paul J. Schupf Art Center in downtown Waterville. In addition to the spirited, whimsical work by Nilsson, the exhibition includes installations by Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt and Catalina Schliebener Muñoz.
