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Prints of a fellow: the acquisition of Leo Steinberg''s Stellar collection makes it official: UT-Austin has one of the top university art museums in the country. (on Art).

Article Excerpt
THERE'S A SENSE OF DEJA VU ABOUT "PRINTS From the Leo Steinberg Collection, Part I," the exhibition on view at the University of Texas at Austin's Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art through July 27. It's not that the work is familiar; much of it is strikingly unexpected. But a pattern does seem to have emerged: A small university gallery acquires a coveted collection, amassed by an eminent scholar, out from under the noses of America's top museums. Five years ago the Blanton scored a stunning coup with the acquisition of the Suida-Manning Collection, a cache of Mannerist and Baroque paintings and drawings assembled by art historians William Suida, his daughter, Bertina, and his son-in-law, Robert Manning, all noted authorities in the field who got into the market ahead of a trend. Last summer the art world was similarly startled to learn that Leo Steinberg, who is regarded as one of the most brilliant art historians working today, had given the Blanton his stellar print collection. Like Suida and the Mannings, Steinberg stole a march on the market, picking expertly from a selection that today is much smaller--and far pricier.

"It was certainly one of the last comprehensive yet distinctive collections of prints in private hands in this country," says Blanton curator Jonathan Bober, who was instrumental in engineering both the Suida-Manning and the Steinberg acquisitions. "In terms of the rarity and quality of the impressions, there is nothing like it." While the $3.5 million estimated worth of the Leo Steinberg Collection doesn't match the Suida-Manning Collection's $35 million, its value to a teaching institution like the Blanton can hardly be overstated. Extending from the fifteenth-century origins of Western printmaking to Jasper Johns's celebrated 1964 color lithograph, Ale Cans (Steinberg wrote a...