To her well-heeled friends, the Dallas-based art collector and socialite Elizabeth “Betty” Brooke Blake is known by a decidedly non-serious nickname: Betty Boop. But when it comes to collecting, especially in the challenging realms of modern and contemporary art, Blake is about as serious as they come.

That much is clear from “Collector: The Collection of Elizabeth Brooke Blake,” a small gem of an exhibit at the Newport Art Museum. Handsomely installed in the museum’s two Cushing Memorial galleries, the show brings together about 40 prints, paintings, sculptures and other works by artists both famous (Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, Alexander Calder) and relatively obscure (notably the gifted Texas painter David Bates).

True to its title, this is very much a collector’s show. Its goal isn’t to provide an in-depth look at a particular period or style. Nor does it provide much information about the artists behind the artworks. If you don’t know anything about the great Spanish Modernist Joan Miro, for example, the show’s lone Miro work — a wonderful little bronze figure that looks a bit like an abstract Transformer — won’t do much to enlighten you. Likewise, the three Calder pieces on display hardly do justice to one of the great sculptors of the 20th century. All three pieces, including a marvelous ink drawing that may be a Calder tribute to Picasso, are works on paper.

What the show does do is offer a personal, if sometimes quirky, tour through American and European art of the past four-plus decades. Fortunately, Blake, who’s been a fixture on the Newport social scene for many years, turns out to be an engaging and consistently keen-eyed tour guide.

That’s especially true of the show’s stash of Pop and Pop-related artworks. True, two of the movement’s biggest guns — Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein — are missing in action. But another member of Pop’s inner circle — Swedish-born sculptor Claes Oldenburg — is represented by a series of 1968 lithographs that playfully outline possible public-art projects. Among the possibilities: a giant drum set, an equally giant flashlight and a monumental navel that Oldenburg helpfully notes would look great installed “on a golf course.”

If these ideas sound a bit far-fetched, consider that Oldenburg and his wife, Coosje van Bruggen, have actually designed a number of large-scale sculptures, including a giant clothespin for Philadelphia, a giant baseball bat (Batcolumn) for Chicago and a giant spoon (Spoon Bridge and Cherry) in Minneapolis. (By the way, the spoon sculpture was made here in Rhode Island by Bristol boatbuilders Merrifield-Roberts.)

Other artists, such as Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, helped paved the way for Pop by bridging the gap between fine art and popular culture. A good example is Rauschenberg’s 1968 Stoned Moon series, in which pictures of rockets, spacesuits and planetary charts are interspersed with abstract doodles and scribbles. The resulting prints suggest a stream-of-consciousness tribute to the NASA space program.

Johns, meanwhile, contributes a pair of works — a small bas relief of a sneaker and a similar relief depicting a slice of white bread. Like the Oldenburg and Rauschenberg prints, Johns’ sculptures were issued by the legendary Los Angeles print studio Gemini G.E.L. (Clearly, Blake knows where to shop.)

Another Pop-related work is In My Cincinnati Studio, a big two-panel painting by Jim Dine. Like several other pieces in the show, this 1963 work seems to have one foot planted in the drip-and-doodle style of Abstract Expressionism and the other in the more media-savvy universe of Pop Art. (Baseball fans, for example, will quickly recognize the circular Cincinnati Reds logo on the painting’s left panel.)

The show also pays its respects to Pop’s European roots.

German-born painter Richard Lindner, for example, weighs in with a darkly dizzying view of New York’s 42nd Street, complete with painted ladies, peepshow barkers and gleaming subway trains. Completed in 1965, it suggests a cross between Weimar-era Germany and Kennedy-era New York. Another work, From France, shows off the skills of the Cuban-born, Paris-based sculptor known as Marisol.

Other selections are more eclectic. There’s a wonderful charcoal drawing by Lee Bontecou, a Providence native whose work from the 1960s and 70s has been rediscovered in recent years. One of the earliest pieces in the show — it dates from 1962 — it features a series of circles within circles and looks vaguely like giant car grille. Another highlight is a small stainless steel sculpture by the great modernist master Alberto Giacometti. As thin as a knife-blade, it still manages to convey a monumental sense of weight and mass.

Blake’s Texas ties are apparent in several works, including David Bates’ Texas Twister, a swirling tornado scene that might have stepped out of the movie Twister, and Doble Impacto, a large watercolor and graphite drawing by the Cuban art duo of Marco Castillo and Dagoberto Rodriguez. Newport, too, gets a nod — notably in a small, shell-like sculpture by Newport artist Howard Newman.

Though hardly a blockbuster, “Collector” may be the perfect summer show: too small to wear you out, but strong enough overall and filled with enough surprises to hold your interest. Combined with the museum’s other summer offerings — including a selection of paintings from the Providence Art Club and a new installation by Jamestown artist Peter Diepenbrock — it’s well worth a visit, even during beach season.

“Collector: The Collection of Elizabeth Brooke Blake” runs through Oct. 7 at the Newport Art Museum, 76 Bellevue Ave. Hours: Mon.-Sat. 10-5 and Sun. 1-5. Admission: $6 adults, $5 seniors, $4 students, free 5 and under. Contact: (401) 848-8200 or www .newportartmuseum.com.

bvansicl@projo.com