The John E. Marqusee Collection

The John E. Marqusee Collection of American Medallic Art provides one prominent collector's selection from the vaster realm of American Medallic Art. Mr. Marqusee started collecting American Medallic Art after he had spent time with Leonard Baskin, himself a medallic artist and collector. As Marqusee put it, Baskin "opened [his] eyes to the medium of relief sculpture."

At first he collected what interested him aesthetically or historically, but after a while he discovered that there was a period that hung together as a cohesive unit: his collection would focus on the period between 1845 and 1945. Thus the catalogue's title "One Hundred Years of American Medallic Art, 1845 - 1945".

In 1995 John Marqusee published the collection's catalogue with the help of cataloguer Susan Luftschein, medallic expert Dick Johnson and the dealers Paul Bosco, Joe Levine, and Ed Sheperd. To this day, it is one of the more complete references of this period's best American medallic art. John Marqusee eventually donated his collection to Cornell University's Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art.

I decided to create an on-line version of the Marqusee collection because there was such a big overlap between his collection and mine. At the time of writing, I owned over a third of the medals that were part of the Marqusee collection, most of them purchased before I knew that there even was a Marqusee collection. Even now, when I see an unknown medal that I really like at an auction, I can probably find it indexed in the Marqusee catalogue. Sometimes I wonder when a medal by one of the artists he appeared to value is not in the catalogue. Did John Marqusee knowingly pass on it or did he just never encounter it?

I will never own all the medals that were part of the Marqusee collection. Some I can't afford, others I don't like as much as John Marqusee did, but it only took a small effort to re-index the medals that I already owned to provide a "Marqusee view" into my collection. I hope it will provide value to collectors and enthusiasts who would like to see images of more medals than are shown in the printed catalogue.

I would love to complete the on-line Marqusee catalogue. It would be wonderful if collectors could send me images and data on the medals that are part of their collections but missing in mine.