A celebrated collection of contemporary art will be distributed to museums throughout the United States, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art is among the first 10 recipients.

Titled "Fifty Works for Fifty States," the gifts of Dorothy and Herbert Vogel consist of minimalist and conceptual pieces originally amassed in their apartment in New York City -- where he worked for the U.S. Postal Service and she was a librarian.

"They were modest-means people, and they decided to devote their earnings to collecting contemporary art," said Lisa Freiman, curator of contemporary art at the IMA. "What they've shown us in their collecting approach is that anyone can do it. You don't have to be rich."

Herbert, 85, and Dorothy, 72, have visited the IMA more than once, including a trip in 1993 when the museum presented an exhibit titled "The Poetry of Form: Richard Tuttle Drawings from the Vogel Collection."

Freiman credits former IMA contemporary art curator Holliday Day for cultivating a friendship with the Vogels, who lectured on the topic of collecting art at the museum in 2003.

Multimedia artist Tuttle will have 12 works in the group of 50 headed to the IMA, which includes works by Robert Barry, Robert Mangold, Elizabeth Murray and Edda Renouf.

Washington's National Gallery of Art houses the Vogels' 4,000-piece collection. Freiman declined to estimate a dollar value.

"It's the most important artists from the 1960s on, and that work is platinum right now," she said.

The museum will not exhibit the 50 pieces earlier than 2009, Freiman said.