An Investment in Pleasure: Fifty Years of the Dixon Gallery and Gardens Collection

In January 1976, the Dixon Gallery and Gardens opened to the public with a small but very choice collection of 19th and early 20th-century European and American paintings and sculpture. The institution’s leaders set out to build upon that strong foundation by carefully adding important works that help tell a more well-rounded story of the development of modern art. That spirit continues today at the Dixon, whose collection now numbers about 2,000 objects. The capstone of the museum’s 50th anniversary year, An Investment in Pleasure, celebrates the story of the Dixon’s collection, from Margaret and Hugo Dixon’s generous bequest to landmark acquisitions in the 1990s to the transformative Curator’s Circle program founded in 2016.