The memory and work of Olive DeLuce’s father has reclaimed a prominent place at Northwest Missouri State University.  

Olive DeLuce arrived in 1915 at what was then the Fifth District Normal School to establish its fine arts department and served as the department chair until her retirement in 1959. She came from a rich heritage of artists and developed her appreciation for art as a child under the tutelage of her father, Percival DeLuce. She continued to enrich those interests through her travel, reading and teaching as a faculty member at Northwest.

After Olive died in early 1970, then-Northwest President Dr. Robert Foster, on behalf of the college, accepted a collection of drawings, paintings, prints and furniture dating back to the 18th century from the DeLuce estate. By accepting what came to be known as the Percival DeLuce Memorial Collection, Northwest also agreed to maintain and exhibit the collection. In October 1971, an exhibit featuring pieces from the collection opened in the Olive DeLuce Fine Arts Building.

For a time, the late Robert Sunkel, an associate professor of art, curated the exhibit and started a paper inventory of the collection. But at some point during the 1980s, the collection was moved to a storage space in the basement of the fine arts building where it sat quietly until recently.

With the help of a small group of students and Lynne Gilbert, administrative specialist to the president, the existing collection of more than 800 pieces has been photographed and documented. The fine arts department is developing an online database of the collection to further enhance its accessibility to the public and make it available for scholarly activity.

“The work we’ve done within the last two and half years was to discover the magnitude of the collection and then also put it contextually into the larger picture of the University collection,” Laber said. “When we started going through that, we discovered that there’s so much more outside of the Percival DeLuce collection.”

Born in New York in 1847, Percival DeLuce was a successful and renowned artist, working most of his career there as a portrait artist and illustrator until his death in 1914. The remodeled gallery featuring the collection opens with a representation of DeLuce’s New York studio, based on a photograph Laber and Gilbert found as they were combing through the collection.

The Percival DeLuce Memorial Collection is housed on the first floor of the Olive DeLuce Fine Arts Building, adjacent to the Olive Deluce Art Gallery.

For more information or to schedule a viewing, contact the Department of Fine and Performing Arts at (660) 562-1326.