HISTORY

Colgate University's fine arts museum is named in honor of Mrs. Evelyn Picker, mother of Harvey Picker '36, Honorary Doctor of Science, and trustee emeritus. Mrs. Picker's generous donation in 1964 allowed construction of the Charles A. Dana Center for the Creative Arts to commence. As Harvey Picker has described it, the gift was characteristic of his mother's philanthropic interests, which favored "innovative projects which would help to keep Colgate in the forefront of those institutions of higher learning which effectively educated well-rounded, competent individuals."

Prior to the opening of the Picker Art Gallery in 1966, Colgate University (founded in 1819) had no art museum. It displayed paintings owned by the university, as well as occasional loan exhibitions organized by fine arts faculty, in classrooms and administrative buildings. Then in the 1960s, as part of a broad expansion of arts programming across the curriculum, Colgate commissioned Paul Rudolph to design a building that would include classrooms for the teaching of art and music, along with a painting studio, art gallery, theater, and musicians' practice rooms. The Dana Arts Center, built between 1964 and 1966, was first used in the spring semester of 1967.

In its original conception, the Picker Art Gallery was intended to serve as a temporary display space for art produced by Colgate faculty and students, and for short-term loan exhibitions of contemporary art. In actuality, the role of the gallery began to change almost immediately following its opening. Alumni made substantial donations of more than 1,000 objects in its first year alone. Over the following four decades—as other works of fine art already on the Colgate campus were placed under the gallery's care, as the budget for acquisitions grew, and as additional gifts continued to arrive—the collection swelled to its present size of more than 10,000 objects, ranging from Pre-Columbian textiles to photographs taken in 2005.

In the 1990s, the Picker Art Gallery expanded its storage and display areas within the Dana Arts Center and was accredited by the American Association of Museums. Today the Picker Art Gallery holds approximately twelve temporary exhibitions per year, many drawn from the permanent collection and from generous alumni loans. These projects are often partially or wholly curated by Colgate students in the gallery's intensive internship program, and by members of the faculty. A rich array of gallery talks, concerts, and other public programs, as well as special activities for families with children and for area schools, attract several thousand visitors per year.

In memoriam: Harvey Picker '36 (1915-2008)
Read a special message from Colgate President Rebecca Chopp