It is an honor for the Allen Memorial Art Museum to host this exhibition of drawings by Jim Dine,which marks the 40th anniversary of his first visit to Oberlin. In 1965, Oberlin College's legendary pro-fessor of art history Ellen Johnson invited the young Ohio-born artist to participate in the College's artist-in-residence program. During Dine's residency, a selection of his work was shown at the Allen,his first solo museum show. That same year the Allen acquired Dine's Charcoal Self-Portrait in a Cement Garden, 1964 (see figure), which remains one of the icons of the permanent collection today.At her death, Johnson bequeathed a number of works by Dine to the Allen, and over the next four decades the museum continued to acquire his works both through purchase and gift.
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