Loretta Yarlow on Christie’s Panel to Discuss Art Collection of Lois B. Torf ’46

The art collection of the late Lois B. Torf ’46, HON’86, a prominent print collector, is set to be auctioned at Christie’s in New York City next week. Torf, who passed away a year ago at age 93, donated several pieces of art to the UMass Amherst’s University Museum of Contemporary Art (UMCA) over the years and was involved at the Museum in Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston as both a member of the collections committee and a trustee. A gallery at the MFA is named in honor of her and her late husband, Michael K. Torf.

Loretta Yarlow, the director and chief curator of UMCA, will participate on a panel on Friday, Sept. 10, prior to the auction moderated by Christie’s Richard Lloyd, the deputy director of prints and multiples. The virtual event, “A Graphic Dialogue: Prints from the Collection of Lois B. Torf,” also features collector Lucile Spagnuolo and  Torf’s daughter Adrienne Torf.

Torf and her husband Michael were noteworthy art collectors and had a gallery at the MFA named in their honor. After her husband’s death in 1988, Torf remained involved with the MFA as a member of the collections committee and as a trustee.

Starting in 1979, Torf donated nearly 100 landmark prints to UMCA over the years, and over her lifetime amassed a remarkable collection of more than 750 works on paper, including prints by Picasso, German Expressionists, and post-war artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. Among the many items being auctioned by Christie’s is Roy Lichtenstein’s “The Crying Girl.”

Largely self-taught as a collector, Torf was raised in Dorchester and was the first in her family to go to college. She graduated from UMass in 1946 with a degree in history and bought her first prints in 1961 during a trip to Japan.