Portrait of Ellen

This portrait of Ellen Johnson recalls the great influence that Johnson had on the Allen Memorial Art Museum and the Oberlin College community. A professor of art history at Oberlin for 38 years and curator of modern art at the Allen, Ellen Johnson dedicated herself to the promotion of contemporary art. Her encouragement of the museum's acquisitions of young artists' works helped make the Allen one of the country's leading institutions in the field of contemporary art. Johnson also famously established the Art Rental Collection, the first of its kind in the United States, allowing students to rent artwork for the entire semester. Upon her death in 1992, Johnson bequeathed almost 300 works from her private collection to the museum, including the Frank Lloyd Wright house that she owned. Many other works were donated to the museum in her honor by artist-friends. This work was a gift of the artist to Ellen Johnson, which she then donated to the museum. Ray Johnson was the founder of Mail Art, a movement associated with Neo-Dada, Conceptual, and Fluxus art. Here he has created a collage on top of the silhouette of Ellen Johnson's face in profile, using cardboard and false eyelashes.