The Gladys Engel Lang and Kurt Lang Collection at the Smith College Museum of Art includes over 1,400 prints, drawings, and watercolors. The core of the collection is related to issues discussed in the Lang’s book Etched in Memory: The Building and Survival of Artistic Reputation, and is primarily focused on the painter-etcher movement between the 1860s and World War II. The book seeks to understand the process whereby some artists but not others come to be considered worth remembering, and the Lang Collection is rich in exemplary works by talented, but little-known artists.
In forming the collection, the Langs sought to acquire certain pieces in an effort to rescue some artists from total oblivion. Since many women were at risk of suffering this fate, they are consequently well-represented in the collection. Among these are the English artists Minna Bolingbroke, Greta Delleany, Hester Frood, Bertha Gorst, Sylvia Gosse, Catherine M. Nichols, Constance M. Pott, Marion Rhodes, Marjorie Sherlock, and Dorothy Woolard and Americans Mildred Brooks, Gabrielle de Vaux Clements, Blanche Dillaye, Edith Lori Getchell, Bertha Jacques, Katherine Merrill, and Mary Nimmo Moran, among many others.
In seeking a new home for their collection, the Langs were interested in placing it at an academic institution in order to make the resource open to scholars and students. In addition to the works of art, the Lang Collection includes books, research materials, and manuscript drafts related to Etched in Memory and other book projects. Although neither of the Langs has a direct tie to Smith or SCMA, the Museum’s impressive track-record in promoting interdisciplinary use of the collection, coupled with our strong and enthusiastic response to this opportunity, ultimately resulted in the collection coming to SCMA.
