Exhibitions
Impressionist Legacies: The Michael and Aimee Rusinko Kakos Collection /
September 7 - November 17, 2023
Saint Vincent College is pleased to announce it has received the personal collection of philanthropists Michael and Aimee Rusinko Kakos. This rare and valuable selection of works is composed of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings assembled by the Kakoses over the course of 40 years. Featuring 88 pieces rarely seen by the public in decades, the collection is principally focused on the transformative years between the 1880s through the 1930s. Many of the pieces were completed by artists who worked alongside those whose names are synonymous with Impressionism and the modernist styles that immediately followed but have largely been omitted from art historical surveys.
Interested in artists that prized both beauty and innovation in their work, the Kakoses opted to gradually collect pieces for their London home that invited sustained looking and appreciation. The collection is supported by a $1 million endowment that underwrites future conservation and interpretation.
Interested in artists that prized both beauty and innovation in their work, the Kakoses opted to gradually collect pieces for their London home that invited sustained looking and appreciation. The collection is supported by a $1 million endowment that underwrites future conservation and interpretation.
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The Rusinko Kakos Collection points to an intergenerational, transnational network of artists who built upon the learnings of Impressionism. Through a constellation of friendships, parent-child relationships, marriages, professional associations, and academic connections, artists shared ideas, techniques, and inspirations that supported the development of their work. While these individuals engaged the same themes, subjects, and methods of working as their more famous counterparts, their names aren’t conjured within common imagination.
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This bequest dramatically expands Saint Vincent’s holdings of nineteenth and twentieth-century European art. This fall, the Verostko Center will mount a signature exhibition featuring the Rusinko Kakos Collection that links the luminaries of the movement with their under-recognized contemporaries.
Above: Victor Alfred Paul Vignon, French, 1847 – 1909, Haystacks (Les Meules de Foin), Oil on canvas, 20 x 17 ½ inches, Saint Vincent Art & Heritage Collections, Gift of Michael and Aimee Rusinko Kakos. Wilfrid Gabriel de Glehn, British, 1870 – 1951, The Ford – Stratford Tony, ca. 1942-51, Oil on canvas, 30 x 36 inches, Saint Vincent Art & Heritage Collections, Gift of Michael and Aimee Rusinko Kakos. Pierre-Eugène Montézin, French, 1874 – 1946, The Laundress, n.d., Oil on canvas, 12 ¼ x 10 ¼ inches, Saint Vincent Art & Heritage Collections, Gift of Michael and Aimee Rusinko Kakos. Henri Eugene Le Sidaner, French, 1862 – 1939, The Trianon at Versailles in the Snow, ca. 1916, Oil on panel, 5 5/8 x 7 7/8 inches, Saint Vincent Art & Heritage Collections, Gift of Michael and Aimee Rusinko Kakos. Photographs by Nathan J. Shaulis / Porter Loves.
a continuous line: works on paper from the saint vincent art & heritage collections / Summer 2023
While styles and approaches diverge, artists have historically initiated their work by drawing or sketching. The line therefore lies at the core of the creative enterprise; the means by which thoughts are made visible. Drawings may record ideas, incarnate narratives, articulate architectural projects, manifest as total abstractions, or evoke people, places, and states of being. This exhibition features works on paper rarely on view, as well as recent additions to Saint Vincent's artistic holdings.
Above: Roman Verostko, American, b. 1929, Untitled, 1988, pen and ink plotter drawing, 24 x 39 1/4 in. Alice Wagstaff and Roman Verostko Legacy Collections. Saint Vincent College, Latrobe, Pennsylvania.
