Now in its twelfth year, the Collectors' Collaborative organizes art-related gatherings twice a year for alumni. Its membership also contributes funds to make an annual acquisition for the Museum. Led by co-chairs Isabel Taube ’92 and Ellen Grenley ’06, the Collaborative is a wonderful way to see friends and to stay connected with the Museum.

Earlier this fall the Collaborative met at the Storm King Art Center in Cornwall, New York. Victoria Lichtendorf ’96 and Ellen—both of whom are educators at Storm King—led a tour of the world-renowned sculpture park and the exhibition Indicators: Artists on Climate Change. Many thanks to everyone who ventured to Cornwall for this special gathering.

This past year’s Collaborative gatherings have been focused on artists whose work intersects with the environment. This theme is especially resonant given the opening of the Roux Center for the Environment in October. To celebrate this new building and to continue its support of faculty and students who are researching aspects of environmental history and science, the Museum will open next month Material Resources: Intersections of Art and the Environment, a new exhibition of selected works drawn from the permanent collection.

We are proud to announce that the membership of the Collaborative has recently selected as this year’s acquisition Mark Tribe’s Balsam Lake, Mountain Wild Forest, Ulster County, New York (2016). Based in New York City, Tribe has been making photographs and videos in a variety of outdoor spaces for more than two decades. Balsam Lake is part of his New Nature series, long-take moving pictures shot in wilderness preserves across North America. Each picture is twenty-four hours long, capturing a day and a night in the life of a wild place. This video will premiere in Material Resources. We are greatly appreciative of the work that the Collaborative does on behalf of the Museum, and we look forward to gathering with the group again in the spring.