With Love: Art in the Service of Campus and Community

Collectors Barbara and Ted Alfond join longtime collaborator and curator Abigail Ross Goodman to explore how private collecting can foster civic dialogue, expand access to contemporary art, and support education.

The conversation examines the development of The Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art, at the Rollins Museum of Art and The Alfond Inn at Rollins College, where works by artists including Kara Walker, Hank Willis Thomas, and Jenny Holzer engage the broader community. The panel addresses the intersection of art, philanthropy, and education, highlighting a model in which collecting enriches the liberal arts experience while hospitality revenue directly supports student scholarships.

Public programs will be held at the Park Avenue Armory and are included with ADAA Fair admission at no additional cost. You can buy your tickets here. Advance registration is required, and seating is limited.

About

Barbara and Ted Alfond

Barbara and Ted Alfond met at Rollins College in 1965, and in their sixty-one years together, they have gratefully centered their lives around family, friends, and the educational and cultural institutions that have given so much to them.
These include Rollins, of course, where each of them have had succeeding terms as Vice-President of the Board of Trustees and where they endowed the Theodore Bruce and Barbara Lawrence Alfond Chair of English in 1994. Since 2012, they have been building, for the Rollins Museum of Art and the greater central Florida community, the Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art. They both hold honorary degrees from Rollins.
At the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Barbara has served as Chair of the MFA Associates and as President of the Board of Trustees. Both a new auditorium and a gallery in the Art of the Americas Wing bear their name. Ted has also endowed the Barbara Alfond Director of Interpretation in the Department of Audience Experience and Engagement, and Barbara and Ted have given numerous gifts of contemporary art and American decorative arts and paintings to the MFA, ranging from Louis Comfort Tiffany to Carmen Herrera and from Meyer Myers to Mona Farmanfarmaian.
Barbara and Ted are both life members of the Colby College Museum of Art Board of Governors and have made a number of gifts of art to the museum and Ted, at the conclusion of Barbara’s term as chair, endowed the Barbara Alfond Director of Exhibitions and Publications.

Abigail Ross Goodman

Abigail Ross Goodman is a Principal of Goodman Taft and a Consulting Curator to the Rollins Museum of Art, where she has collaborated on the development of their Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art since its inception in 2013. Abigail has curated/co-curated numerous public exhibitions and projects, including Ground/work at the Clark Art Institute (Williamstown, MA) in 2020, the 2012 deCordova Biennial at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (Lincoln, MA), several exhibitions at the Rollins Museum of Art (Winter Park, FL) as well as numerous gallery exhibitions, most recently Motherlode: Material and Memory at James Cohan Gallery. Abigail has also spearheaded, along with Molly Epstein and Ellen Langan, public art installations by artists such as Nicole Eisenman, Lonnie Holley, Raúl de Nieves and Gaetano Pesce. She lectures and contributes to publications, serving as editor of the Art for Rollins series. She is an Honorary Trustee of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and an Advisory Board member of the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston. She holds a BA in History of Art and Architecture from Brown University.