By Taft Museum of Art

Berthe Morisot's "Young Woman on a Sofa" (1893) conveys a private moment that's typical of images in the current exhibition at the Taft Museum of Art.

The special exhibition on view this summer at the Taft Museum of Art is a mini-blockbuster -- "mini" because is consists of a mere 30 works of art, all small in size, but "blockbuster" because it presents paintings and sculptures by the greatest European artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

An Impressionist Eye: Painting and Sculpture from the Philip and Janice Levin Foundation is a traveling exhibition organized by the American Federation of Arts. The word "Impres-sionist" is used in the title as a teaser, banking on the premise that the American public's love affair with Impressionism will catch our attention. But actually, the exhibition contains excellent pictures by the Impressionists and extraordinary examples by great early modernists with works created from 1841 to 1954. The names alone will draw crowds: Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, Edouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard, Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani and Alberto Giacometti.

I have always had a special affinity for small works of art. Large pictures and massive sculptures force us to step back, as they invade our space and take over our immediate environment. Small pictures invite us to move in close and enter a private space. We leave our own world behind and become quiet voyeurs into the private moments of others.

One of the smallest pictures in the exhibition -- and one of my favorites -- is a good example. "Trouville: The Nanny" by Eugene Boudin (1824-1898) is only 5-by-9 inches. While it was painted in 1885, it does not take much imagination to transform it in our mind's eye into a 2005 photograph of a family excursion to the beach, babysitter and all.

Lots of information is packed into this small picture. First, it illustrates the Impressionists' penchant for capturing the bourgeois classes in leisure activity -- especially when this took place outdoors. Second, the seaside setting allowed Boudin to explore the Impressionists' interest in the natural world, which they saw as ever-changing, exemplified by momentary variations in light. What better place to explore these themes than an afternoon family outing on a sun-drenched beach in northern France?

Another one of my favorite pictures, created almost four decades later in 1923, is somewhat larger in scale but retains the same intimacy. "The Luncheon" by Pierre Bonnard (1967-1947) depicts the artist and his lifelong companion seated casually, lingering over a midday meal. The space is filled with color and patterns and light, so the artist's delight in picture-making is evident; but so too is his interest in conveying the quiet intensity of a domestic moment.

The only weakness in the Taft exhibition, which is a delight from start to finish, is the tight installation. The pictures need more space between them and the sculptures ought to be raised to eye level. But this is a minor flaw considering the quality of the works of art on view.

Phillip and Janice Levin began collecting French art for their home in New York in the late 1960s. Phillip Levin's death in 1971 put the collection in the capable hands of his wife, who continued collecting until her death in 2001. Several of the major works were bequeathed to museums, and the rest was placed in a family foundation that is the basis for An Impressionist Eye.

That this exhibition is based on a single private collection leads me to think about the value of the collecting process on the health and well-being of Cincin-nati's leading visual arts institutions.

The Taft is in the lucky position of having a superb collection that is considered complete. The Contemporary Art Center (CAC) is a non-collecting facility for changing exhibitions. The Cincinnati Art Museum (CAM), however, strives to be our local encyclopedic museum, continually upgrading its collection through gifts and purchases.

Given these different missions, what role does private collecting play for our major visual arts institutions? I asked the directors of the Taft, the CAC and CAM. The CAC's Linda Shearer says her institution "would like to help develop collecting, because it would create a more active artistic community for everybody." The Taft's Phillip Long was forthright in stating that "the collecting community is shallow, and that we do not have the kind of collectors today that we did when the Tafts were alive, or when Mary Johnston or Mary Emery were active."

As an observer of the collecting community, I agree with both Long and Shearer. Collecting is important for the health of the artistic community, not only because it produces collections that might find their way into CAM, but also because of what the process of collecting does for individuals and what these individuals might add to the stewardship of these institutions.

If the volunteer leaders of CAM, the CAC and the Taft are to have the knowledge and insight to steer these institutions, it is crucial that there be among them a strong group of collectors who, like Janice Levin, possess a passion for art based on personal experience.

Whether the collectors focus on American and European contemporary art, Japanese ceramics or African sculpture is not the issue. What is important is that Cincinnati's major visual arts institutions cultivate the process of collecting based on an in-depth appreciation of art: That will enable the core reasons for these institutions to be preserved and nurtured.