Displaying items by tag: tom wesselman

Stéphane Aquin holds a distinguished profile in the Canadian art world and abroad, in part because he arrived to the role of curator from art criticism, but also because, in an era of revolving doors and fast-tracked career-making, Aquin has stayed with one institution—the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA)—for a long stretch of time, putting his head down and achieving increasingly strong exhibitions. Over the course of 16 years, he has accomplished major solo exhibitions with the likes of Pipilotti Rist, Tom Wesselman, and, most recently, Peter Doig, what many consider (including Aquin) his crowning achievement at the MMFA. In addition, he has curated interpretations of the Chapman brothers, Andy Warhol, and Alfred Hitchcock, and expanded the museum's collection by more than a thousand artworks, including works by David Altmejd, Kiki Smith, Antony Gormley, Dorion FitzGerald, and Michael Snow.

Ileana Sonnabend was one of the greatest and most influential discoverers of artistic talent of the late 20^th century, known and appreciated for her intuition, strength of character, ground-breaking vision and for that eclecticism of taste and thinking that enabled her to understand and promote all that was new in American and European art. Created over many years and a material reflection of her commitment to supporting young artists and the avant-garde movements of the 20^th century, her extraordinary collection now finds a “European home” in the splendid monumental rooms on the second floor of the Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna at Ca’ Pesaro.

The exhibition marks the first step in a long-term collaboration with the Sonnabend Collection and Sonnabend Collection Foundation, and offers an extraordinary opportunity to enrich the city’s 20^th-century art collections and the permanent displays at Ca’ Pesaro, which thanks to the works from the Ileana Sonnabend collection, will be able to offer its visitors a more comprehensive itinerary with plenty of masterpieces from the history of art of the whole of the 20^th century. The Sonnabend Collection picks up exactly at the point in which Ca’ Pesaro ended its collecting spree and relationship with the Biennale, and will lead the visitor past a series of works of the highest artistic quality forming part of the principal experimental schools of the late 20^th century through over 70 iconic works of the period.