96 By Marie-Thérèse Brincard The Neuberger Museum must keep moving. … It has to be an electrified space: The reinstallation of the African collection internationalizes our institution and broadens our lives. ROY R. NEUBERGER The Neuberger Museum of Art is the only art museum within a college campus in New York state to present African art alongside American and European, modern, and contemporary art. Opened in 1974 on the campus of Purchase College of the State University of New York (SUNY) in Westchester County, twenty-five miles north of New York City, the Neuberger Museum of Art (NMA) was designed by Philip Johnson and today houses more than 7,000 works. The force behind the African collection was Aimee W. Hirshberg (fig. 3) and her husband, Eliot. The Hirshbergs were friends of Marie S. Neuberger, the wife of Roy R. Neuberger, a well-established financier and founder of the Wall Street firm Neuberger Berman, whose collection of modern art was to become the cornerstone of the museum that would bear his name. The decisive figure in the creation of a museum within a SUNY campus was Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller. In the mid 1960s, he began to envision a State University of New York campus that would include a teaching museum for students in the liberal arts and sciences and in the visual and performing arts. Creating an interdisciplinary approach to the arts and transforming a college campus into a “miniature Lincoln Center with an opera house and theaters serving also the communities in New York and Connecticut”1 was an innovation at the time. Convinced by his vision, Neuberger, a friend of Rockefeller, made a promised gift of approximately 300 works that would be donated to the museum over the course of the following decade. After this initial gift, he donated an additional 600 works from his collection. In addition to being an avid collector of modern art, Neuberger also distinguished himself by collecting works by living artists.2 FIG. 1: View of the entryway of the Neuberger Museum of Art. Photo: Kristi McKee © 2012. FIG. 2: Headdress, chi-wara. Bamana. Kinian, Kenedougou region, Mali. 19th or 20th century. Wood, fiber. H: 91.4 cm. Ex Helena Rubinstein; Aimee W. Hirshberg, 1966–1984. Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York, inv. 1984.11.01. Gift of Eliot P. Hirshberg from the Aimee W. Hirshberg Collection of African Art. FIG. 3: Aimee Worms Hirshberg. Reproduced with the kind permission of Ellen Grandsard. ART on view The Neuberger Museum of Art: THE AFRICAN COLLECTION
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