NEW YORK — Herb and Dorothy Vogel's one-bedroom Manhattan apartment is small, even by New York standards. The Vogels themselves are also small, each about five feet tall. It is almost impossible to imagine that they could have lived in a space that size along with 2,500 works of art, albeit small ones, and their eight cats, 19 fish and 20 turtles.

The Vogels are unlikely Medici. One trip to their apartment will confuse any visitor who associates collectors with Mercedes double-parked outside Christie's on Park Avenue. J. Carter Brown, director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, dispelled any misimpressions last week when he announced that the Vogel collection would be entering the gallery's permanent collection, as a donation and purchase.

"This is perhaps the premier collection of modern and contemporary drawings in a field of 20th-Century art in which we were virtually barren--minimalism and conceptualism," Brown told an audience at the National Press Club last week, where he announced the donation.

"It's particularly remarkable," Brown added, "because the Vogels devoted their lives to this collection, at great personal sacrifice--he was on the salary of the Postal Service, she was a reference librarian in Brooklyn--and at great discomfort. They have befriended the artists, watched the trends, brought all this together as a collection as a work of art in itself."

At home, surrounded by their animals and by blank walls--the National Gallery has been taking inventory of their collection in Washington since September, 1990--Herbert and Dorothy Vogel's perspective on their collection was a bit less spectacular than Brown's, but perhaps more illuminating on the 30 years the Vogels have spent acquiring art.

"I wouldn't call it a sacrifice," said Herb, with a stentorian voice. The 69-year-old retired postal worker sat with his brown-and-cream-colored cat Renoir in his lap. Renoir stuck his tongue out at Whistler, Manet, and Degas, all cats who had gathered around.

The filters for the turtle and fish tanks gurgled loudly.

"We lived on my salary and we spent his on the art," said Dorothy, 56, who is the same height as her husband. "Now we live on my pension and we spend his on art. It really was no sacrifice because there was nothing else we really wanted to buy." The couple has never owned a car, she said. Herb's clashing plaid trouser and blazer looked well-worn. The clutter in the apartment is anything but minimalist.