Before everyone gets distracted by the opening of the new Harvard Art Museums later this week, let’s learn a little about the expansion set to open a day before, on Nov. 15, at the Tacoma Art Museum. I haven’t been to Tacoma in about 20 years, and the museum has moved to new quarters since then. Back in 2003, it moved to a $22-million Antoine Predock-designed building. Now it is opening a new wing and entrance to house a collection of Western art donated a few years back.
The gift came from a German supermarket mogul, billionaire Erivan Haub, and his wife Helga. They have “had close ties to Tacoma since the 1950s; the couple’s three sons were born there,” hte museum said. “They spent many summers in the Puget Sound region and still spend time there.” They also own a ranch in Wyoming.
In 2011, they donated 295 works from their family’s Western American art collection, which Tacoma says is among the top dozen in the U.S.
Much of it–more than 130 works–will go on view in the debut exhibit, called Art of the American West: The Haub Family Collection. This portion will remain on view until November 15, 2015 in four new galleries, 16,000 square feet in all, in the new wing.  The collection includes works by 140 artists, and spans 1797 through today. The oldest work is Gilbert Stuart’s Portrait of George Washington aned the two newest works are Barbara Boldt’s Galiano Island, 2009, and Clyde Aspevig’s White Cliffs of the Missouri, also 2009.
Among the other artists in the collection are Georgia O’Keeffe, Albert Bierstadt, Charles Bird King, Thomas Moran, Charles Russell and Frederic Remington.
Bierstadt’s Departure of An Indian War Party (1865) is posted here. If you’d like to see what else you could see in the collection, click here for an Exhibition Checklist Art of the American West-The Haub Family Collection.