Last fall, Brenau Galleries put on one of the several exhibitions it does each year on campus, but this one was a retrospective of the remarkable career of  John Heliker, who died in 2000 at age 91 after about seven decades as a pillar of the New York art world. For more than 30 of those years, he taught painting at Columbia University and the Parsons School.  

Extremely pleased with the program, Patricia Bailey, the executive director and treasurer of the New York and Maine-based Heliker-LaHotan Foundation, said that exhibition prompted her and others on the foundation board to do something for Brenau in return. It donated to the university’s permanent collection of art two paintings: Heliker’s 1988 Self Portrait and Man at a Table, a self-portrait by Heliker’s former Columbia pupil and 40-year life companion Robert LaHotan.

Brenau’s relationship with the Heliker-LaHotan Foundation began serendipitously. University President Ed Schrader on a holiday trip wandered into a gallery in Asheville, North Carolina, that was exhibiting Heliker’s work. He liked it, left a business card for Bailey, and a message that he wanted to get that same show at Brenau. However, the Brenau exhibition added other artistic elements, like dance and music. The exhibition drew a good crowd and introduce many students and others in the community who’d never heard of Heliker before nor new much about his influence and influencers.

“We hold Brenau University in high regard,” said Bailey, who personally delivered the paintings to the Gainesville campus in late March. “Learning more about the university and its people has been a pleasure.”