DeLuce Memorial Collection highlights legacy of art program founder

DeLuce Memorial Collection highlights legacy of art program founder

An exhibit at Northwest Missouri State University's Olive DeLuce Art Gallery sheds new light on its namesake and founder of the University's art department.

The exhibit, "Olive DeLuce and Her World" opened in March and remains on display through February. Dr. Karen Britt, an associate professor of art, curated the exhibit with the assistance of Dani Downey, who graduated from Northwest last spring with a bachelor's degree in history.

"Her world was a really large one," Britt said of DeLuce, who arrived at Northwest in 1915 and retired as department chair in 1959. "She traveled often, in the U.S. and abroad. She spent the academic year in Maryville, and then in the summer she traveled extensively in the same way that art faculty do today. She painted what she saw and experienced in during her travels."

The exhibit brings Olive's artwork and other personal effects out of the University's archives while enhancing the Percival DeLuce Memorial Collection, a gallery space the University remodeled and reopened in 2016 to showcase items donated by the DeLuce estate after Olive's death in 1970.

The exhibited artwork provides insight to Olive's career as a painter and includes several oil paintings inspired by regular trips to Europe and various parts of the U.S. Visitors can see oil paintings she completed while traveling during the 1930s to locations in New Mexico, Colorado, Maine and Massachusetts. The exhibition also includes landscapes and portraits painted in France and a painting of the family cottage of Anne Hathaway, William Shakespeare's wife, in England.

"Olive's career is significant because this is the very time, in the early 20th century, that several female artists, like Georgia O'Keeffe, for example, were traveling to the desert Southwest and painting," Britt said. "I see Olive as occupying a place within that group of women artists who had a sense of adventure and curiosity about the world at a time when it wasn't easy for women to travel on their own."

Among other items featured are a rug that is believed to have been brought back to Maryville by Olive from New Mexico. The collection also includes a black suitcase with brown trim and Olive's initials stamped on it and a purse-like bag displaying a U.S. Customs label. The citation commemorating Olive's years of service to Northwest as well as diplomas recognizing her schooling in New York - from an elementary age to her Master of Arts degree from Columbia University - also are displayed.

Visitors have a unique opportunity to interact with the exhibit, too, by viewing Olive's photo slide collection, which depicts her travel experience in both personal snapshots and postcard-like slides that she collected along the way. With the slides exquisitely labeled in her handwriting and meticulously organized, Olive incorporated them into her teaching and projected them for students in her art history courses.

Visitors to the exhibit are allowed to thumb through a wood storage box and pick out slides to view through a lightbox. The display also includes postcards, brochures and pamphlets Olive collected from places like the British Museum in London and the Louvre Museum in Paris.

"She was clearly very stimulated by what she saw during her travels," Britt observed. "She also visited museums and galleries, and what she experienced turns up in the work that she produced."

Exhibit brings more new life to DeLuce Memorial Collection

Olive DeLuce came to Maryville with a rich art heritage and developed her appreciation for it under the tutelage of her father, Percival DeLuce. Born in New York in 1847, Percival was a successful and renowned artist, working most of his career as a portrait artist and illustrator until he died in 1914.

"I realized there was a story here that deserved to be told," Britt said. "When you think about it, Olive, who arrived here in 1915 - imagine what it would've been like. She was born in New York City, educated in New York City. … She establishes the fine arts program at the university and then spent the rest of her life both devoted to the University but also to preserving her father's legacy."

After Olive died in early 1970, then-Northwest President Dr. Robert Foster, on behalf of the college, accepted a collection of drawings, paintings, prints and furniture dating back to the 18th century from the DeLuce estate. By accepting what came to be known as the Percival DeLuce Memorial Collection, Northwest also agreed to maintain and exhibit the collection.

Around 2012, after a couple of decades in storage, the collection was resurrected by Phil Laber, who retired from Northwest as a professor of art in 2016. A small team of students and staff subsequently spent more than two years photographing and documenting the collection, totaling more than 800 pieces. Once finished, the University celebrated its reopening of the Percival DeLuce Memorial Collection in the Olive DeLuce Art Gallery in August 2016.

Still, the exhibit highlighting Olive's work only came to fruition after Downey conducted a "condition check" of items last year in a storage room that houses the DeLuce collection at the Fine Arts Building. While rearranging some of the items, Britt and Downey noticed an untapped walk-in closet - blocked by a desk and filing cabinet - containing rugs, furniture, suitcases and other items belonging to Olive that had not been cataloged in the University Archives database.

It is the kind of thing that excites historians and archaeologists - like Britt, who joined the Northwest faculty in 2019 and use artifacts to reconstruct the past as a means for understanding the present.

"While she has been justly lauded for her groundbreaking work in the field of art education, Olive DeLuce was an artist-educator who understood that her creative practice as an artist was inextricably linked to her effectiveness in teaching," Britt said.

In addition to the items highlighting Olive's work and travel, the exhibit space housing the Percival DeLuce Memorial Collection features a representation of Percival's studio with a handful of his paintings, two Napoleonic chairs, his easel and a 17th-century Boulle desk as depicted in an original photo. It includes depictions of a young Olive - who was born in 1888 as the second child of Percival and his wife, Emma Budlong - throughout the collection, including an oil painting of the girl writing at the Boulle desk.

"When people visit the gallery to view our revolving exhibitions of contemporary art, there's also something new to look at in the Percival Memorial Collection that highlights the strength of our permanent collection," Britt said. "It's really important, and it's a privilege for us to be stewards of the DeLuce family collection."

The Percival DeLuce Memorial Collection is housed on the first floor of the Olive DeLuce Fine Arts Building, adjacent to the Olive DeLuce Art Gallery. Fall gallery hours are 9 a.m. to noon on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays; 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesdays; and 2 to 5 p.m. Thursdays.

For more information or to schedule a viewing outside of the regular gallery hours, contact the Department of Fine and Performing Arts at 660.562.1326.