Late 2008 and early 2009 were watershed moments for the addition of drawings to the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art’s collection.  On the heels of the impressive gift of fifty drawings, paintings, and sculptures from New York collectors Herb and Dorothy Vogel, another New York collector and his wife donated an important group of twenty drawings to the CRMA.  In many ways, this more recent gift picks up where the Vogel gift leaves off, including works by both well- and lesser-known artists from the 1970s to today.  Like the Vogel collection, the focus is on minimal and conceptual works, demonstrating the lasting legacy of those movements. 

Beginning with the purchase of a Jasper Johns drawing in 1958 for the then high sum of $175, the Kramarsky’s went on to amass a collection of more than 4,000 works of art.  Every so often, the collector and his wife donate some drawings to a lucky museum in the country.  The Cedar Rapids Museum of Art is truly fortunate to have been the recipient of these tantalizing drawings in 2009, on view here for the first time in Cedar Rapids.