Permanent Collection
Permanent Collection
Permanent Collection at Rowan University
The Rowan University Art Gallery & Museum collection consists of approximately 300 fine art objects with particular emphasis on the works of American women artists who were active in the pivotal period of the 1970s and 1980s. The Rowan University Art Gallery & Museum mission is to present diverse forms of contemporary art by professional artists with content that is thought provoking, relevant, and timely. With our exhibitions, collections, and programming we seek to engender curiosity and a passion for contemporary art, enrich the quality of life for area residents, and serve as a vibrant cultural destination for South Jersey, the Rowan community, and surrounding region. We are committed to cultivating an inclusive, accessible, and just environment that encourages dialogue and collaboration between artists, students, faculty, and the general public through the presentation of interdisciplinary, contemporary art exhibitions, artist talks and other public programming, and by making our unique collection of art by women artists accessible for study and inspiration.
The Sylvia Sleigh Collection
The Sylvia Sleigh Collection is comprised of nearly one hundred paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, and photographs by women artists. It was amassed by Sylvia Sleigh (1916–2010), a pioneering feminist and tireless supporter of women artists. She became well-known in the 1970s for her paintings of nude men. She unashamedly reveled in the beauty of the human body while challenging the tradition in which male artists depicted anonymous, idealized, and often eroticized female models. Sleigh was among the founding members of SOHO 20 Gallery (est. 1973), an important women’s cooperative. She subsequently joined A.I.R. Gallery (est. 1972), the first artist-run exhibition space for women in the United States.
It was Sylvia Sleigh’s intention to donate her collection to an institution that would preserve the work and make it accessible through periodic exhibitions. She acquired the works of other women as a way of supporting them and honoring their achievements, regardless of whether they were critically acclaimed or financially successful. With the Sylvia Sleigh Collection as its foundation, the permanent collection of Rowan University Art Gallery & Museum will be supplimented in the same spirit.
Catalog of the Sylvia Sleigh Collection
The Sister Chapel
The Sister Chapel, a historic collaborative installation created at the height of the women’s art movement, opened in 2016 in the Center for Art and Social Engagement for its first public exhibition since 1980. With the exception of two paintings that comprise The Sister Chapel, all of the works featured in the installation are part of the permanent collection of Rowan University Art Gallery & Museum.
Art on Loan
Portrait of an Actor: Sean Pratt, 1994 by Sylvia Sleigh opens Framing the Female Gaze: Women Artists and the New Historicism, a new exhibition at the Lehman College Art Gallery, Bronx, NY. Curated by Bartholomew F. Bland, Patricia Cazorla, Georgette Gouveia, and Deborah Yasinsky, the show explores how women artists today focus their gaze on both women and men. The show runs from October 10, 2023 through January 20, 2024. Click here to visit the exhibition website. The work, owned by the Rowan University Art Gallery & Museum, is part of the Sylvia Sleigh Collection and was last on public view in the exhibition Looking Forward, Looking Back.
Sylvia Sleigh’s Lilith, a component of The Sister Chapel (on permanent display in the Center for Art and Social Engagement, an program of Rowan University Art Gallery & Museum), made a rare trip overseas for an important exhibition at the Hamburger Kunsthalle in Hamburg, Germany. The exhibition, Femme Fatale: Gaze–Power–Gender, curated by Dr. Markus Bertsch, opened on December 9, 2022, and continued until April 10, 2023. Click here to visit the exhibition website.
Two works owned by the Rowan University Art Gallery were on loan to The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut. Cecile Abish’s Boxed Monuments 3 (1969) and Paula Tavins’s Untitled (1973), both from the Sylvia Sleigh Collection, were on view in 52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone. The show commemorates a historic exhibition, Twenty-Six Contemporary Women Artists, which was curated by Lucy Lippard and presented at The Aldrich in 1971. Click here to visit the exhibition website.
Collections Management Policy
The Rowan University Art Gallery Collections Management Policy articulates the professional standards and practices by which the proper development, management, preservation, and use of the collections held by the Rowan University Art Gallery & Museum is ensured.
The Collections Management Policy is a comprehensive written statement that:
● Sets forth the mission of the Gallery;
● Explains how this mission is pursued through the permanent collection;
● Articulates the Gallery’s professional standards regarding objects in its care;
● Serves as a guide to personnel in carrying out their collection related responsibilities,
and;
● Provides the public with information about what objects and information the Gallery collects and preserves and how the Gallery performs these functions.
Contact Information
Contact Mary Salvante or Dr. Andrew Hottle, with questions regarding Rowan University Art Gallery's permanent collection.
Mary Salvante
Director & Chief Curator, Rowan University Art Gallery & Museum
salvante@rowan.edu
Dr. Andrew Hottle
Professor of Art History
hottle@rowan.edu