On February 14, The Merriman Art Gallery in Templeton Hall will host a historic exhibition drawn from Eastern University’s remarkable Goebel Collection of Graphic Art—more than 1,000 works on paper spanning five centuries of printmaking. This is the first time the collection has been exhibited on Eastern’s campus.

The exhibition features select works by artists such as Rembrandt, Albrecht Dürer, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Francisco Goya, James McNeill Whistler, Käthe Kollwitz, Paul Cézanne, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dalí, William Blake, Eric Gill, Michel Ciry, Rockwell Kent, Fritz Eichenberg, Berthe Morisot, and others.

Eastern’s stewardship of the Goebel Collection began with the care, dedication, and generosity of Dr. Harry C. Goebel (1893–1976), a New York attorney who bequeathed the collection to Eastern in 1966 and returned often to campus to lecture about it until his death. Goebel learned of Eastern through his Baptist pastor, and after several visits, chose Eastern from among multiple institutions to serve as the permanent home of his treasured collection. He intended the gift to enrich students’ education by placing before them significant works of art across a wide range of subject matter—religion, mythology, history, industry, social issues, landscapes, and portraiture. He also knew Eastern was a small school that lacked many of the cultural treasures other, larger institutions possessed, so he decided to give it one, believing that its students also deserved access to cultural artifacts like the ones he collected over five decades.

The collection includes many forms of print media—etching, drypoint, copper and steel engraving, lithography, woodcut, monoprint, wood engraving, and serigraphy. Each piece has been carefully cataloged and preserved in archival storage. For decades, the collection has been housed in Eastern’s Warner Memorial Library; with the opening of The Merriman Art Gallery, it can now finally be shared with Eastern’s students and the wider Mainline community.

Guests at the opening will receive a complimentary copy of Select Prints from the Goebel Collection at Eastern College (Alfonz Lengyel, 1988). (While supplies last).

Exhibition dates & hours: Monday–Friday, through May 15.

Come celebrate a major cultural treasure at Eastern University, and enjoy printworks from some of the most well-known artists of the last 500 years!