A museum’s permanent collection takes shape under the influence of myriad forces and influences. For most art museums, it is the product of strategically cultivating a vision and long-term direction for a diffuse group of artworks and objects that the institution commits to care for and interpret in perpetuity. The decision regarding what objects to accession, or formally integrate into the collection, is often made by a museum’s curator in consultation with colleagues and a dedicated and knowledgeable group of trustees and community partners in a Collections Committee.

In this exhibition, you will find a wide range of artworks that BRAHM is pleased to count among its most recent and upcoming collection accessions. They also serve as an example of the different avenues a work of art might travel on its path to the museum’s vault. The majority of these acquisitions were made through the generosity of art collectors by donation or promised gift. These gifts are carefully considered by all parties as the museum references its strategic collection plan, the donors’ wishes, and how individual objects might be used in exhibitions for years to come. When a museum finds an artwork especially relevant to its collecting and exhibition program, it may also endeavor to directly purchase that object from a gallery or auction. Elliott Daingerfield’s Woman with Geese is the first such purchase made by BRAHM in its decade-long history.