Contact: Sarah Clark-Langager, director of the Western Gallery, (360) 650-3963, Sarah.ClarkLangager@wwu.edu; Patricia Relay, Washington Art Consortium, (360) 650-2234, patricia.relay@wwu.edu
BELLINGHAM - The Western Gallery and other members of the Washington Art Consortium (WAC) are stewards of jointly owned prominent art collections stored at Western Washington University. 
For the first time since the Western Gallery became host to the collections, there is a storage and conservation system in place that approaches the quality of the art itself.
According to Patricia Relay of the WAC, "generous support" from the Bagley and Virginia Wright Endowment, the Inland Northwest Community Foundation and the Greater Tacoma Community Foundation has funded the storage improvements. Funding by the Henry Luce Foundation has also made it possible to preserve and treat 27 especially important works of art, including pieces by Mark Rothko, Mark Tobey, Josef Albers and Helen Frankenthaler.
"While the Consortium's mission is to preserve the works, it is also to make the works readily accessible to the public," Relay said. "Now that the works are stored in a safe environment, Consortium member organizations will be better able to access the collections, utilize works in their own special exhibitions and loan individual works to other world-class institutions."
Sarah Clark-Langager, director of the Western Gallery and a WAC board member, said that while conservation is among an art institution's highest priorities, that need is not widely appreciated.
"People tend to overlook the fact that art needs ‘maintenance' just as our houses, lawns, cars and bodies do," Clark-Langager said. "Having the state-of-the-art storage system and newly preserved works at Western sends a signal to our community that conservation is important - whether here or at the Whatcom Museum."
The WAC, the first organization of its type in the nation, was organized in 1975 by five Washington institutions that would have undivided interest in a collection of artwork and would share the responsibility of ownership. The Western Gallery, along with the Museum of Art at Washington State University, the Tacoma Art Museum, and the Cheney Cowles Museum (now the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture) of the Eastern Washington State Historical Society, Spokane, were among the original members. Joining the Consortium later were the Whatcom Museum of History and Art, Bellingham (1979), the Henry Art Gallery of the University of Washington, Seattle (mid-1980s), and the Seattle Art Museum (1993).
The idea was that member organizations would share in an art collection that would not belong to any one museum, but would instead tour continuously throughout Washington State. The first collection was "Works on Paper: American Art 1945 - 1975," a survey of post-war American art (1945-1975) including Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Andy Warhol to name a few. The collection was to be shared between the museums, known collectively as the Washington Art Consortium. The second collection acquired in 1980, "American Photographs 1970-1980," features 184 works by 31 of the period's well known photographers, including Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, Ralph Gibson, Duane Michals, Nancy Rexroth, Eve Sonneman, Karen Truax, and Garry Winogrand. The third collection, a 1998 gift from Richard and Margaret Aiken, focuses on American and European artists from mid-century to the present, such as Jennifer Barlett, Francesco Clemente, Judy Pfaff and Susan Rothenberg.
This notion of joint ownership is becoming a more widely discussed collecting strategy given today's competitive art market and the limited purchase funds of museums. Today, the Consortium collections remain a significant modern art resource in the region.
For more information on the Washington Art Consortium, please visit http://www.wwu.edu/depts/wac. For information on the Western Gallery, visit http://westerngallery.wwu.edu/.
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