MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Nearly 30 years after Patricia Bright was first introduced to the artwork of modernist Blanche Lazzell, she and her husband, Bill Bright, are helping to bring the state native’s work home with a $1 million gift to West Virginia University.
The Brights’ contribution supports a $1.5 million fundraising effort to expand the Lazzell collection at the art museum at the WVU College of Creative Arts, according to Arts Dean Keith Jackson.
“Patty and Bill Bright have single-handedly put the art museum of WVU on an international map with their tremendous gift supporting the Blanche Lazzell acquisition,” Jackson said. “With the addition of these 70-plus works of art to our collection, the art museum of WVU will become the museum of the world at which to study Blanche Lazzell.
“This is truly an exciting opportunity for WVU and West Virginia, as schoolchildren from all over can now see the work of a pioneering painter and printmaker who got her start in the mountains of West Virginia. We’re bringing a native daughter home, and Patty and Bill Bright have made this possible.”
Lazzell was born in Maidsville, West Virginia, near 