Pepperdine University’s Payson Library recently received nearly 600 volumes of art history books from Pacific Palisades resident Tommy Breslin. The collection belonged to his late wife Audrey Ezratty Breslin, who was an undergraduate art history major at UCLA. She went to law school and became a public defender in West Los Angeles.
The collection consists of a wide variety of subjects, including Monet, Kokoschka, the complete albums of drawings by Francisco Goya, museum catalogs, and books on architecture and studio ceramics.
The Breslins traveled extensively, so the collection reflects works from such places as the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Albertina Museum in Vienna and the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.
“We are delighted to receive this stellar collection and grateful to Mr. Breslin for donating books to Pepperdine, which are so relevant to our curriculum and which hold such universal appeal,” said Mark Roosa, dean of libraries.
The new books will begin arriving on the Payson Library shelves in the next few weeks.