You have to love Dorothy and Herb Vogel, the hardworking New Yorkers who harnessed their modest careers -- Herb was a postal clerk, Dorothy a librarian -- to their passion for contemporary art. Without benefit of trust funds or inherited wealth, they amassed a 4,000-piece collection that's now distributed among the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and 50 other museums nationwide, including the Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota.

The art they gave to the Weisman, on view today through Jan. 10, is unusually intimate and personal, a reflection perhaps of their unassuming personalities. Now retired, the Vogels doted on art for half a century, befriending artists, visiting studios, dropping in on gallery shows and museum events. Allocating his salary and pension to art and hers to living expenses, they became small-scale, modern-day Medicis whose support and encouragement knit together a whole community of New York artists and aesthetes.

In their tiny apartment, art covered every wall, hung from the ceiling, was tacked to the back of doors and crammed into crates and boxes. When they gave the first part of their hoard to the National Gallery in 1990, it took five trucks to haul it down to Washington, D.C. That gave them breathing room to go right on buying and donating. Eventually, the gallery persuaded them to spin off 2,500 pieces in a "50 works for 50 states" program that included the Weisman.

The Weisman gift is actually closer to 150 pieces because it includes several pieces each from some artists. There are 15 elegant calligraphic drawings by Lisa Bradley, for example, and 37 little watercolor squiggles on notebook paper by Richard Tuttle. Bradley's sketches are as fetching as they are simple. Drawn on sheets about 14 by 18 inches, each consists of fine-lined ink gestures positioned as eyes and mouth are in faces. Or the same configuration may imply breasts and pubic hair, shorthand for a torso. Nothing is detailed, specific or fixed. Not much more than an artist's warm-up exercise, or a caricaturist's noodling, they are still engrossing.

Eclectic choices

The Vogels were venturesome in their collecting and their friendships, sometimes supporting experimental work that doesn't look like much, but has a curious back story. What appear to be abstract etchings in gray and apricot by Joseph Nechvatal are actually drawings he made by programming computer viruses, setting them loose in his own system, and then programming them to print out images, said Weisman curator Diane Mullin. A cassette recording holds a sound sculpture by Robert Barry consisting of 60 minutes of repeated words. It's recorded in two 30-minute segments that the Weisman staff at first assumed were identical. Only after listening to the whole tape did they discover one additional word at the end: "soon."

Some pieces look like drawings for other projects, while others are complete in themselves. An oval "black blob" drawn by Jene Highstein could be a sketch for a sculpture similar to his ambitious granite pieces in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. But Steve Keister's watercolor of a cactus is as simple and self-contained as a kid's painting. Will Barnet, a traditional figurative painter, sketched profiles of the collectors themselves, and Daryl Trivieri delivered three beautiful paintings that appear based on altered photos of a neoclassical sculpture, a swimming turtle and a wistful girl. Among the few sculptures is a pyramid of subtly stained canvas -- apricot, rust, green -- that Alan Shields stitched together and stretched like a toaster cover over a plywood form. There's also Michael Lucero's amusingly garish ceramic head with a clown face and a bizarre headdress topped with a tiny teacup. And a sweet little rose-pink drawing of a bed by Lori Taschler.

Collections are often seen as indirect portraits of their owners, hinting at their background and interests while subliminally revealing their pretensions and aspirations. On the rude theory that you-are-what-you-own, the Vogels come across as modest, warm, unassuming and generous. They love dining with artist friends at inexpensive ethnic restaurants, and some of the Weisman art looks like it might have been doodled during dinner. Some of their artist friends became famous (Sol LeWitt, Cindy Sherman), but many never made it into the art-history books. They clearly don't collect for the reflected fame that often comes with the possession of flashy art. Small-scale and eclectic, their collection is quirky, ephemeral and grounded in the daily life of working artists. The gift of friendship is invaluable, as is the Vogels' role-modeling for art collectors.

Mary Abbe • 612-673-4431