Joan Brock, a longstanding supporter of the Chrysler Museum, was the first woman to preside over the Chrysler Museum Board and served as a museum docent. Her late husband, Macon Brock, chaired the museum’s 2014 capital campaign and the couple’s support funded the museum’s 2014 expansion. Macon Brock cofounded Dollar Tree Inc., where Joan also worked for decades.
The artworks from the Macon and Joan Brock collection span nearly 100 years of American art, from just after the Civil War to the mid-20th century, according to the Chrysler Museum.
“The Brock Collection is one of the most significant private collections of American art assembled in the 21st century,” Corey Piper, the Brock curator of American art, said in a statement. “Major paintings and works on paper by the most important artists of the late-19th and early-20th centuries chart a broad history of American art of the period and will allow the Chrysler to tell new and more compelling stories of our nation’s artistic history.”
The gift includes 29 paintings by artists such as John Singer Sargent, John La Farge, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, George Benjamin Luks, George Bellows, Childe Hassam, Marsden Hartley, Sally Michel and William McGregor Paxton. Among the 10 works on paper are two works by William Merritt Chase, two by Winslow Homer and a watercolor by Charles Ephraim Burchfield. A glass sculpture by Debora Moore is also included.
“In addition to their historical importance, the works in the Brock collection stand as superlative examples of exceptional quality, a testament to Macon and Joan’s astute eyes. While their love of American painting guided their pursuits, they also demonstrated great foresight in the construction of a collection for the public’s benefit. The gift of the collection will elevate the stature of the Chrysler’s American art holdings and programs, making it a national leader in the exhibition, study, and appreciation of American art,” Piper said.
The collection adds 15 artists not previously represented in the museum and fills in key gaps in the museum’s collection, the museum noted in a news release. Nineteenth-century works from the Hudson River School, American Impressionism and the Aesthetic movement, as well as 20th-century American Modernism pieces, are in the collection