Brandeis' Rose Art Museum found itself in the pages of such art news outlets as ArtInfo.com recently after receiving an unusually large amount of donations to its collection. "This has been an amazing year for the Rose collection," said Michael Rush, the Henry and Lois Foster Director at the Rose Art Museum.Recent gifts include a $1 million collection of contemporary art consisting of forty works since 1990 by American and European artists including Mike Kelley, Jessica Stockholder, James Hyde, Beat Streuli and David Reed. The works in the collection represent a number of media, from painting and scuplture to installation.

The name of the donor of the $1 million contemporary collection was not disclosed to the public, but the donor was described as "an admirer of the Rose and its great exhibitions for a long time," according to Gerald Fineberg, chair of the Rose Board of Overseers. "This gift provides the bridge from our extraordinary holdings from the 1950s and 60s to the present," he said.

Fineberg refers to the Rose's 1950s and 60s holdings in the Abstract Expressionist and Post-War American and Pop genres. The Rose's mid-century collection includes works by such artists as Andy Warhol (students may remember last year's celebration of the acquisition of a portrait of Justice Louis Brandeis by Warhol), Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns and Robert Motherwell, as well as many others.

Another donation of artworks consists of contemporary art by international artists to be exhibited in areas around campus with high student traffic. The donation is the first in a what is to be a series of yearly donations by alumnus Carey Schwartz. This year's donation includes works by such artists as Jim Dingilian, Ori Gersht, Shai Kremer, Gillian Laub, Lorrain O'Grady and Christian Xatrec.

"This gift is especially meaningful because it is intended to be enjoyed by the highest number of students and visitors possible," said Rush

Other gifts came from the Board of Overseers, including Fineberg, who donated two drawings by Marcel Dzama, as well as Boston collectors Joan and David Genser. The Gensers' donation is entitled "Space Dust" and is a multimedia work on paper by James Rosenquist.

"We have doubled our acquisitions endowment and now received all these gifts. This places us in the forefront of museums collecting modern and contemporary art," said Rush.