“Sol LeWitt began acquiring works of art in the early 1960s. At that time, collecting was primarily a matter of exchanging works with artists in his own circle of friends in New York City. Later LeWitt extended the scope of the collection with works of artists of related interests from more distant locations. As he achieved greater recognition and traveled widely, LeWitt began to purchase works more actively…
In 1976, LeWitt placed much of this diverse collection of contemporary art, now comprising several thousand objects, at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford with the intention that it would eventually enter the museum’s permanent collection. Though the LeWitt collection strongly favors works on paper, it includes a broad range of media: sculpture, painting, drawing, prints, photography, musical scores, certificates of ownership, original manuscripts, mail art, artist’s books, periodicals, museum publications and a recently acquired cassette tape-recording….
LeWitt’s fundamental concern in placing this collection at the Atheneum was to assure its accessibility to the public. Since 1977, the museum has used many of the objects in various changing exhibitions and has permitted loans whenever possible. Since 1982 one of Atheneum’s approximately sixty galleries has been devoted exclusively to selections from the LeWitt collection, thus establishing the first permanent installation of primarily conceptual art in any United States museum.
The first large-scale exhibition drawn from the LeWitt Collection took place at Wesleyan University in 1981, curated by John Paoletti. The current ICI-Athneneum effort is the first traveling exhibition from the collection and was originally conceived in response to LeWitt’s strong desire to share it with a broad audience. The selection of nearly sixty objects, plus mail art and artist’s books, represents some of the collections highlights”
-Andrea Miller-Keller and John Ravenal, 1984
