The Kamen Collection of Western Art was bequeathed to Washington and Lee in 1986 by Stan Kamen '49. Although he was a native of New York City, Kamen became a true son of the west filling his home and office with paintings, prints and sculptures reflecting his love of horses and the western landscape.

The Kamen Collection brings to Washington and Lee the benefits of Kamen's personal taste and knowledge. It offers a view of the American West and particularly of the "Old West" that has been created by some of America's foremost twentieth-century western artists.

Introduced in 14th century Japan, the netsuke would hang from a kimono's obi or sash by a cord to attach the container in which Japanese men stored their personal belongings such as pipes, tobacco, money, seals, or medicines. These ancestors of the toggle soon became elaborately sculpted from ivory, lacquer, wood, and other exotic materials like rhinoceros horn or walrus tusk. The netsuke in the Washington and Lee Collection come from distinguished alumnus, Joseph M. Glickstein.

W&L Theater commissioned studio art and pyschology major Abbey Wilson ’09, to design the department’s 2009-2010 season posters. Wilson was the recipient of The Class of ’64 Fine Arts Prize 2009 and the 2009 Studio Art Prize.

Wilson uses the printmaking process of color reduction woodcuts to create visual imagery. Prints will be on display in the Kamen Gallery at each production’s opening and in the show, A Theater Art Exhibit, in the Kamen Gallery from March 1 - March 29, 2010.

Carroll Klingelhofer paints landscapes and occasional marine subjects in oils. He is associated with the Annapolis Marine Art Gallery. His work is in numerous private collections and has appeared in American Art Review. Largely self-taught, he has studied with, and taken workshops from, prominent American landscape painters. Each year he travels to the West and various other locales in search of interesting subject matter.