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March 18 through Hankin, Betz, Putman-Smith, and Commonwealth Galleries, Doylestown Sponsored by Wilmington Trust In 1999, the Michener Art Museum received the most important collections gift in its history: 59 Pennsylvania Impressionist paintings, in trust from the collection of Marguerite and Gerry Lenfest. This gift, in the form of a bequest, was supplemented by an equally important $3,000,000 cash endowment gift to help care for the work.
A few years later the Lenfests assisted the Michener in acquiring three additional works, including two major paintings by Redfield that were saved from the auction block. In 2004, the Lenfests converted this entire bequest to an outright gift, and the addition of these 62 paintings to the Michener's collection means that the museum now has the finest collection of Bucks County art in public hands. In honor of this remarkable act of generosity by two remarkable people, the Michener for the first time exhibited the entire Lenfest gift, allowing our visitors to see first-hand both the quality and extent of the Lenfest collection—a collection that will now be accessible to the public in perpetuity.
This exhibition, which commemorated the Lenfests' entire gift of paintings, was the first time the complete collection has been seen together. These paintings include many fine examples of works by the beloved artists whose names have become synonymous with Bucks County's visual heritage: Edward W. Redfield, Daniel Garber, Fern I. Coppedge, William L. Lathrop, John F. Folinsbee, Robert Spencer, Charles Rosen, etc.
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