The Hoene Hoy Photography Gallery at The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College was established through an endowment given by Anne Hoene Hoy, Vassar alumna in the class of 1963, in honor of her mother, class of 1930, and sister, class of 1966.
Hoy, a former curator at the International Center of Photography, is the author of The Book of Photography: The History, the Technique, the Art, the Future and Fabrications: Staged, Altered and Appropriated Photographs, among other books, and has taught the histories of photography, modern and contemporary art, and graphic design at New York University since 1995. She is also a long-time member of the Art Center’s Advisory Council for Photography, which underwrites photography acquisitions with its annual donation.
The Loeb’s permanent collection contains more than 4,000 examples of analog and digital photography, film, and video, ranging from 19th-century works by pioneering practitioners, to icons of fine art photography by 20th-century leaders, to cutting-edge contemporary photographs and videos made in this century with strengths in the collection including portraiture and street photography. The Loeb continues to diversify its holdings, with recent additions by international artists and artists of color, as well as of vernacular photography, daguerreotypes, tintypes, and historical documentary images.
Currently on display, this exhibition highlights recent photography acquisitions that enhance the Loeb’s deep holdings of contemporary art and documentary photography and strengthens the representation of women and artists of color in the collection.
This recently closed exhibition centered on the tension between visibility and invisibility, inherent to the medium of photography, through works by Black American artists.
Curated for the Film 218: Genre: The Western class in spring 2020, this exhibition features a selection of black-and-white photographs from the Loeb collection, alongside digital color images and a music video, that addresses central myths of the American experience associated with horseback riding, ranch labor, cowboys, and rodeo culture.
Held in spring 2017, this exhibition explores the “Women are Beautiful” series created by American photographer Garry Winogrand. Best known for his 35mm candid shots taken on urban streets in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, during that period, he completed a body of work called “Women are Beautiful” comprising almost one hundred candid images of women in public places that were published in a book of the same title in 1975.
Held in fall 2017, this small, focused exhibition comprises eight works, ranging in date from 1948 to 2014, that feature diverse techniques and approaches to photography, from traditional gelatin silver prints to photograms and experiments with color photo-sensitive paper.
Held in spring 2018, this exhibition presents nine works by Billy Name, born William George Linich, who donated his artwork and ephemera to the Loeb after displaying them here in 1989. Name grew up in Poughkeepsie, later moving to New York City, then California, before returning to Poughkeepsie permanently in 1977.
Held in summer 2018, this exhibition explores the career of British photographer Grace Robertson who created spontaneous, timeless images that offer rare glimpses of the human spirit, often with great humor and character. Her well-composed photographs balance aesthetics and documentation and demonstrate both a classic, fine art approach to the medium and a genuine interest in the lives of real people.
Held in fall 2018, “Framing Space” explores the relationship between architecture and the photographic image, a perhaps unlikely pairing of two mediums that have become inextricably linked. On view are several works created from the mid 1930s through the 1970s depicting buildings and urban areas in various states of construction and destruction that explore the technique of framing as a methodology.
This inaugural exhibition, held in fall 2016, featured ten artworks that were recently acquired with funds given by Vassar’s Advisory Council for Photography.
