Speed Museum to Get New Contemporary Art

Louisville’s Speed Art Museum is among the first art institutions to receive works for its permanent holdings this year from one of the country’s most famous contemporary art collections.The museum will receive 50 pieces from the collection of Dorothy and Herbert Vogel, which made news in 1992 when the couple gave it to The National Gallery of Art. He is a retired postal worker and she a retired librarian who amassed thousands of 20th century art works over 30 years.The National Gallery named the Speed and nine other museums Friday to receive works from the collection this year. It will later add 40 other institutions."I would suspect that the Speed will be one of the first museums to show the 50 works, and that’s one of the conditions of the gift is that they eventually want each museum to be able to show the generosity of the Vogels basically to the nation," says Charles Venable, the Speed Museum’s director.Venable says the Speed Art Museum will exhibit the pieces in 2009.