Local Historical Society Honors the Loeb for Service to the Community
In June, T. Barton Thurber, Director of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, accepted the Dutchess Award from the Dutchess County Historical Society (DCHS) for the museum’s contributions to the local community, including its role in spotlighting portraits of members of the family that had built the recently restored 180-year-old farmhouse where the celebration was held.
DCHS President Robert Doyle presented Thurber with the award, which recognized the Loeb for its “exceptional contributions to the Dutchess County community and beyond in the areas of preservation, history, and/or education.”
Doyle pointed to Thurber’s leadership in creating partnerships with the Historical Society and other community groups. The team at the Loeb, he said, had lent material support and counsel to DCHS as it mounted its major 2022 exhibition Fertile Ground: the Hudson Valley Animal Paintings of Caroline Clowes. Four of Clowes’s paintings are on exhibition at the Loeb through an extended loan agreement.
Thurber told the approximately 75 local residents who attended the event that he was honored to receive the award on behalf of the museum and the College. “I have only been with the museum for four years, but, in that time, we have strived to forge community partnerships, and our efforts are really just beginning,” he said.
Thurber said the College had always made its art collections accessible to the local community ever since the first Vassar art gallery opened in 1864, and he noted that the Loeb had remained open to the public throughout the COVID-19 pandemic “even after our students had to leave the campus.”
A guest of honor at the event was Vassar alum Fredrika Simpson Groff ’60, whose great-great-grandfather, George Collins, and great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth Borden Collins, were the original owners of the house.
Event host Frank Castella Jr., President and CEO of the Dutchess County Regional Chamber of Commerce, who purchased the historic Collins Estate four years ago, thanked Groff for helping his family restore the home by providing artifacts that had graced the house when it was owned by her family. Over the past three years, Groff has sent the Castella family numerous items she and other relatives had saved from the home. One contribution was an 1831 oil painting of Elizabeth Borden Collins and her daughter Phebe by the renowned artist Rembrandt Peale. (The portrait is currently on special display at the Loeb, and Groff was able to revisit the work during her trip.) Other donated items include personal diaries, a chest with items that belonged to Elizabeth Borden Collins, maps of the property, daguerreotype photos of family members, and deeds to family cemetery plots.
Groff told Castella and others she was glad she had traveled from her home in Colorado to visit her ancestral home. “It’s wonderful to see how it’s being preserved,” she said. “It was worth the trip all the way from Denver to be here today.”