The KOA Art Gallery will exhibit art and books
collected by Bradford philanthropist and art connoisseur T. Edward Hanley
Friday through March 8 in the exhibit “T.E. Hanley: A Local Man with a World
View.”
Dennis
Frank, archivist for the Friedsam Memorial Library at St. Bonaventure
University in Allegany, N.Y., will give a lecture on Hanley’s donation of books
and manuscripts to St. Bonaventure, the University of Arizona and other
universities and libraries, including Pitt-Bradford and the Bradford Area
Public Library. The lecture will take place at 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 7, in the
Bromeley Family Theater of Blaisdell Hall, followed by an opening reception.
The exhibit will be on display in the
KOA Art Gallery, which is open from 8:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday
and 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Fridays.
The
exhibit will feature items from The Hanley Collection at St. Bonaventure,
including a small number of books and realist paintings from a variety of eras.
“It
is wonderful to have the opportunity to share some of the works from the T.
Edward Hanley Collection in an exhibition like this,” said Evelyn Penman,
assistant director for the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts at St.
Bonaventure. “Dr. Hanley’s gifts to St. Bonaventure include works by some of
the best-known American artists of the 20th century.”
Hanley
and his wife, Tullah, were important donors to both Pitt-Bradford and St.
Bonaventure, and the library at Pitt-Bradford is named in their honor.
Patty
Colosimo, coordinator of arts programming at Pitt-Bradford, said she has wanted
to collaborate with St. Bonaventure on such a show for a long time.
“The
topic was a natural,” she said.
Hanley
began collecting as a student at Harvard University in the early 20th
century. The son of wealthy Bradfordians who had made their fortune
manufacturing bricks and dabbling in the oil and gas fields, he received an
allowance each month that he put toward purchasing first-edition books.
“He
collected from people he thought were going to make a big impact,” Colosimo
said.
Later
he began collecting art with the same eye. Frank said that Hanley was simply
born with good taste. “He just had a great eye – not only for art, but also for
literature.”
Hanley
generously selected and bankrolled a substantial collection at the
then-backwater University of Arizona in Tucson. He later sold a massive
collection of books, manuscripts and literature to the University of Texas,
including first editions and manuscripts of D.H. Lawrence, George Bernard Shaw,
Dylan Thomas, Samuel Beckett and corrected page proofs of James Joyce’s
“Ulysses.”
“People
always think of his art collection and don’t realize the extent of his
bibliographic holdings,” Frank said.
A
concurrent show of more items from The Hanley Collection will take place at the
Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts at St. Bonaventure, which is open from 10
a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays and noon to 4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.
For
more information, contact Colosimo at (814)362-5155.
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