Boston artists have no champion more knowledgeable, more tenacious, or more devoted than Sinclair Hitchings. During Hitchings’ 43-year tenure as Keeper of Prints at the Boston Public Library, he expanded his department’s holdings to nearly one million drawings, prints, photos, post cards, and watercolors; by focusing particular attention on collecting local artists, Hitchings amassed one of the largest public collections of works by Boston artists.

Now in retirement, Hitchings plans to build on that success. He is pursuing his lifelong dream of creating ART in BOSTON, an organization that will promote area artists and serve as a public resource for contemporary art. According to Catherine Kernan, the Director of Maud Morgan Arts, ART in BOSTON “will be a living, ongoing project operating with the direct cooperation and continuing input of working artists.”

To kick off the project, ART in BOSTON has partnered with the Chandler Gallery, a program of Maud Morgan Arts, to display prints, paintings and drawings from Hitchings’ personal collection. The exhibition will feature curatorial talks to provide context for the collection within Boston’s art history.

An extensively researched catalog will accompany the exhibition as a means of documenting the collection, and after the exhibition, Hitchings will donate these works, as well as printed material about Boston area artists, to form ART in BOSTON’s core collection. This show has already garnered support from the NLT Foundation, a foundation committed to helping small organizations with long-term projects that enhance public access to art.

“Art in Boston: An Inaugural Exhibition from the Collection of Sinclair Hitchings” is on display at the Chandler Gallery from January 14 through March 1, 2013 with an opening reception on Sunday, January 27, from 3-5 pm.

As Keeper of Prints at the Boston Public Library, Sinclair Hitchings mounted numerous collaborative exhibitions including Drawings from Boston: 100 Works by 50 Living Artists with Ties to Boston (1987) with the DeCordova Museum, and Proof in Print: A Community of Printmaking Studios (2001) with Mixit Print Studio. His catalogs include The Visionary Decade: New Voices in Art in 1940s Boston, Boston Impressions (with Naoko Matsubara), and Boston Prints and Printmakers, 1670-1775. Hitchings was an influential force behind the Boston Art Dealers Association’s yearlong exhibition entitled 1999: Celebrating Boston’s Artists.