Lehrer—German for Teacher

The day started out as ordinary as they ever get in studio art, where one day is never the same as the next. Then, out of the blue, the Southwestern Studio Art Department received a very generous gift from Marilyn and Leonard Lehrer. The couple offered to donate part of their impressive collection of art books—some 262 of them—in addition to magazines and catalogs. Since the A. Frank Smith, Jr. Library Center did not have room for everything, the Lehrers agreed to house the collection in the painting studio, where students would find them most useful; not even minding if the books became paint-smudged.

The Department created a reading nook in the studio, which students have aptly named the “Lehrer Lair.” During their breaks from long painting sessions, students sit comfortably in the reading nook and peruse books on artists ranging from Hendrick Goltzius to Mark Tansey. Those books in the Lehrer collection are marked with an embossed chop mark on the opening page.

The Lehrers’ lifetime collection covers some of the most important artists in Western art and is a remarkable in-studio resource for Southwestern. “As an artist and educator, Leonard Lehrer accumulated a remarkably wide range of books to serve his voracious appetite for knowledge in both historical and contemporary art,” says Chair of Studio Art Victoria Star Varner.

Leonard Lehrer has lead a distinguished career as an artist and educator, having held positions as Chair of the Art Department at the University of New Mexico, Division Director of the Department of Art and Design at The University of Texas at San Antonio, Chair of the Art Department at Arizona State University, and Dean of the College of Fine and Performing Arts at Columbia College in Chicago, followed by service as Associate Provost of the college.  He returned to Texas as Visiting Professor and Director of the Printmaking Convergence Program in the Department of Art and Art History at The University of Texas at Austin. Lehrer has also served on the College Art Association’s committee on defining both the B.F.A. and the M.F.A. degrees, and was Chair of the College Board’s National Task Force on Arts and Education in the U.S. He continues to serve on the Arts Task Force for the Fulbright Association.

Varner says, “We very much appreciate the Lehrers’ support of Southwestern’s creative and intellectual goals. In addition to the students’ use of the collection, I am using it to enrich the content of my courses on contemporary art. We have such wonderful friends in the Lehrers, whose sophisticated, intellectual and artistic tastes and generous gift will be treasured by many generations of students to come.”