Seattle University just hit the jackpot with a gift that will forever change its landscape—literally and figuratively. The institution revealed Wednesday that it's set to receive an astounding $300 million art collection from real estate magnate Richard Hedreen, along with a cushy $25 million for a brand-new museum to house it. Calling this donation "the largest gift in the history of the university," the trustees couldn't contain their elation in an announcement cited by The New York Times.
It's over 200 pieces of some serious brushwork and craftsmanship dating back to the 15th century up to modern times, they've got old masters next to fresh talents and everything in between; it’s a veritable who's who with Thomas Gainsborough, Lucian Freud, and Amy Sherald among others. "It’s a remarkable teaching collection," gushed university president Eduardo Peñalver, mentioning in an interview that the whole campus is going to get some serious art-cred, making this an interdisciplinary goldmine as per his chat with The Times.
The scale of this gift is unprecedented not only for the university but also in the history books—it's the largest art donation ever made to a U.S. university, and the biggest single contribution to an institution in Washington state. It’s a big deal, and that's putting it mildly. Richard Hedreen and his late wife Betty have long been patrons of the arts with Elizabeth "Betty" Ann Petri Hedreen a respected alumna of the university, and she, together with her husband, has been backing the university's permanent collection for years as noted by Seattle University's announcement.
“Since their earliest days, the Jesuits have recognized the visual arts as a powerful tool of communication and teaching and the arts are an essential part of the holistic Jesuit model of higher education,” President Peñalver proclaimed, all but singing praises for the Hedreens who have amassed one of the nation's finest curated art troves, displaying a roster that includes Jacopo da Pontormo, Jan Lievens, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Luis Egidio Meléndez all the way to pop icons like Roy Lichtenstein and Americana embodied by Robert Indiana; tonnes of treasures, literally, now heading to Seattle University's doorstep, all this according to the university's mouthpieces.
A deeper dive into this massive bequeath reveals some serious icing on the art cake, we're zooming in on photographic genius with the likes of Berenice Abbott, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and good old Irving Penn, not to mention Warhol, and a mix of contemporary heavyweights like Cecily Brown and Rashid Johnson thrown into the mix—basically, it's a crash course in Art History 101 to Art Now, and it's all laid out in the details provided by Seattle University.
