Displaying items by tag: Museum of Modern Art

On March 7, the Whitney Museum of American Art launched its 77th Whitney Biennial -- a highly-anticipated survey of the latest developments in American art. This will be the last Biennial in the Whitney’s building on Madison Avenue before the museum moves downtown to its new Renzo Piano-designed building in the spring of 2015.

The 2014 Whitney Biennial was co-curated by Stuart Comer, the Chief Curator of Media and Performance at the Museum of Modern Art, Anthony Elms, an Associate Curator at the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute of Contemporary Art, and Michelle Grabner, an American artist and Professor in the Painting and Drawing Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The curators have selected 103 participants that together, offer a sweeping view of contemporary art in the United States. Two Whitney curators, Jay Sanders and Elisabeth Sussman, both of whom organized the renowned 2012 Biennial, oversaw the process. 

Donna De Salvo, the Whitney’s Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Programs, said, “The 2014 Biennial brings together the findings of three curators with very distinct points of view. There is little overlap in the artists they have selected and yet there is common ground. This can be seen in their choice of artists working in interdisciplinary ways, artists working collectively, and artists from a variety of generations. Together, the 103 participants offer one of the broadest and most diverse takes on art in the United States that the Whitney has offered in many years.”

The 2014 Whitney Biennial will take place through May 25, 2014.

The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation announced that six American museums have acquired works by Robert Rauschenberg thank to its Gift/Purchase Program. The program was designed to expand public access to and awareness of Rauschenberg’s work by offering institutions the opportunity to acquire artworks from the foundation’s collection through equal parts gift and purchase.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York acquired “Bande de Surete/Twin City/Nipples (Cardboard)” and “Vow (Jammers);” The Minneapolis Institute of Arts in Minnesota gained “Park/ROCI MEXICO;” the Museum of Modern Art in New York obtained “Nabisco Shredded Wheat (Cardboard),” “Gull (Jammer),” and “Stop Side Early Winter (Glut);” The New Orleans Museum of Art in Louisiana acquired “Melic Meeting (Spread);” The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in California gained “Rosalie/Red Cheek/Temporary Letter/Stock (Cardboard);” and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York obtained “Untitled (Venetian).”

The works, which were created across two decades, are from some of Rauschenberg’s most important series. His Cardboards explore the aesthetic potential of everyday materials; the Venetians are sculptural works reminiscent of the Italian city’s atmosphere; Jammers, which were inspired by a trip to India, celebrate the sensual qualities of fabric; Spreads are large-scale works that combine printed imagery and found objects; Gluts touch on socioeconomic issues; and the artist’s ROCI series was created as part of a humanitarian project that promoted world peace through artistic dialogue with local cultures.

Rauschenberg, who helped bridge the gap between Abstract Expressionism and Pop art, was a pioneering figure in 20th century art. He is best known for his “Combines,” which are part painting and part sculpture. Rauschenberg often used found objects and non-traditional materials in these works.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York is hosting “Gauguin: Metamorphoses,” the first major monographic exhibition on Paul Gauguin ever presented at the institution. It is also the first show to focus on the Post-Impressionist artist’s rare prints and transfer drawings and their relationship to his better-known paintings and sculptures.

“Gauguin: Metamorphoses,” which features nearly 130 works on paper and 30 related paintings and sculptures, includes loans from public and private collections. Between 1889 and his death in 1903, Gauguin created the prints in discrete bursts of activity. He experimented with woodcuts, watercolor monotypes and large transfer drawings and often repeated and recombined key motifs from one image to another, allowing them to evolve across mediums.

In order to highlight the relationships among works across mediums, the exhibition is organized loosely by date and groups related works together. The show starts with “Zincographs: The Volpini Suite,” which was created in 1889 and includes Gauguin’s first prints.The 11 zincographs were created on zinc plates rather than the traditional limestone slabs used for lithography, which is indicative of Gauguin’s unconventional artistic choices. “Woodcuts: The Noa Noa Suite and The Vollard Suite” includes Gauguin’s first woodcuts. The Noa Noa Suite was created between 1893 and 1894 after the artist’s first trip to Tahiti and ushered in the modern era with its distinctly rough and “primitive” style. The Vollard Suite, created between 1898 and 1899 after Gauguin returned to Tahiti for the second and final time, explores figures and themes from his earlier works and serves as an abbreviated retrospective of his career. Additional sections are devoted to the watercolor monotypes that Gauguin created around the time he was making the Noa Noa woodcuts, and his oil transfer drawings, which were made using a technique he invented in 1899.   

“Gauguin: Metamorphoses” will be on view at MoMA through June 8, 2014. 

This March, the Museum of Modern Art in New York will present a selection of new works by the celebrated contemporary artist Jasper Johns. “Jasper Johns: Regrets” features approximately 30 works created by the artist in the last year and a half.

Johns, who emerged as a pioneering figure in American art in the late-1950s, is known for his exploration of iconography, especially flags, targets and numbers. Johns’ new series introduces a new motif -- the British painter Lucian Freud. Johns took a photograph of Freud sitting on a bed with his arm raised to obscure his face, and not only incorporated the image into his work, but also the physical qualities of the original black-and-white print, which had been torn and creased. The new series includes an array of mediums such as watercolor, pencil and ink-on-plastic.

“Jasper Johns: Regrets” will be on view at the Museum of Modern Art from March 15, 2014 through September 1, 2014.

This June, the Picasso Museum in Paris will reopen following a five-year renovation. The institution, which holds one of the most comprehensive collections of Pablo Picasso's work, initially closed for a two-year refurbishment, but once underway, the scope of the project expanded. The renovation cost around $71 million to complete.

Prior to the renovation, the Picasso Museum could only display a fraction of its 5,000 paintings, drawings, sculptures, ceramics, photographs, and documents. The project nearly doubled its exhibition space, allowing the institution to exhibit more of its illustrious collection.  The museum will also be able to accommodate more guests than ever before and annual admission figures are expected to rise from 450,000 to 850,000.

The museum, which is located in a 17th-century Baroque mansion in Paris' historic Marais quarter, first opened to the public in 1985. Most of its collection was left to the French state upon Picasso's death in 1973. A number of works were also donated by the artist's family, including his widow Jacqueline.

In mid-2015, The Picasso Museum will begin holding one major exhibition each year. The first annual show will be in collaboration with New York's Museum of Modern Art and will focus on Picasso's sculpture.

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco are currently hosting the exhibition “Modern Nature: Georgia O’Keeffe and Lake George” at the de Young Museum. The show, which was organized by the Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, New York in association with the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is the first exhibition to explore Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings of Lake George.

Between 1918 and 1934, O’Keeffe would spend months at her husband Alfred Stieglitz’s family estate slightly north of Lake George Village in New York’s Adirondack Park. During this highly productive period, O’Keeffe created over 200 paintings depicting the bucolic, wooded setting, which differ greatly from her well-known renderings of the sparse Southwestern landscape.

“Modern Nature” features 53 works from public and private collections and includes botanical compositions of flowers and vegetables as well as still lifes and paintings of the trees that grew on the 36-acre estate. The exhibition also includes paintings of weathered barns and other structures as well as panoramic landscapes. Works have been loaned from a number of celebrated public institutions including the Seattle Art Museum, the Denver Art Museum, the High Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Walker Art Center.

Colin B. Bailey, director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, said, “It is especially gratifying to host this pioneering and scholarly exhibition of Georgia O’Keeffe’s Lake George‒period works, as the artist’s ‘Petunias’ (1925), featured in the exhibition, is a highlight of our renowned collection of modernist works by artists associated with the Stieglitz circle.”

The de Young Museum is the only west coast venue for the exhibition. “Modern Nature” will remain on view through May 11, 2014.

Earlier this year, New York’s Museum of Modern Art announced that it would move forward with an expansion project that involved razing the former home of the American Folk Art Museum. The Tod Williams and Billie Tsien-designed building was acquired by MoMA in 2011 after the Folk Art Museum defaulted on more than $30 million in bond debt. The building sits adjacent to MoMA and earned praise for its bold design when it opened in 2001.

Glenn D. Lowry, MoMA’s director, announced that although the former Folk Art Museum will be demolished, the building’s striking bronze facade will be disassembled and stored. The museum has made no further decisions about what will happen with the facade beyond its preservation. Darcy Miro, the artist who collaborated with Williams and Tsien to design the facade, suggested erecting the bronze panels as a freestanding sculpture at Storm King Art Center, an open-air museum in Mountainville, New York.

MoMA’s expansion is being helmed by the New York-based design studio, Diller Scofidio + Renfro.   

The Museum of Modern Art’s Board of Trustees has approved the initial plans for an expansion project that will add 40,000 square feet of public space and galleries to the museum. The addition will allow the institution to reconceive how its collection and exhibitions are presented. New York-based architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro will spearhead the project.

In order to make way for the new galleries and spaces, MoMA will raze the former home of the American Folk Art Museum, which it acquired in 2011 after the Folk Art Museum defaulted on more than $30 million in bond debt. Designed by New York architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, the American Folk Art Museum’s former building sits adjacent to MoMA and earned praise from architecture critics when it opened in 2001.

Glen D. Lowry, MoMA’s director, released a statement saying, “The plans approved today are the result of a recommendation from [DS+R] after a diligent and thoughtful six-month study and design process that explored all options for the site. The analysis that we undertook was lengthy and rigorous, and ultimately led us to the determination that creating a new building on the site of the former American Folk Art Museum is the only way to achieve a fully integrated campus.”

New York’s Museum of Modern Art is honoring the legendary gallerist and collector Ileana Sonnabend with the exhibition ‘Ileana Sonnabend: Ambassador for the New.’

The show brings together works that were shown in her galleries in Paris and New York between the 1960s and 1980s. Sonnabend, who opened the Sonnabend Gallery in Paris in 1961, was instrumental in bringing American art of the 1960s, most notably Pop Art and Minimalism, to Europe. Sonnabend opened a New York outpost in 1970 and conversely introduced Americans to European art movements such as Arte Povera.

‘Ambassador for the New’ features works by approximately 40 artists, including Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, John Baldessari, and Jeff Koons. Works on view have been pulled from MoMA’s own collection as well as other public and private holdings.

‘Ileana Sonnabend: Ambassador for the New’ will be on view at MoMA through April 21, 2014.  

The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation has announced that it will donate its remarkable Harry Shunk and Shunk-Kender Photography Collection to five major institutions -- the Getty Research Institute, the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Centre Pompidou, and the Tate. The collection includes approximately 200,000 black-and-white prints, color prints, negatives, contact sheets, color transparencies, and slides.

The Foundation’s donation is unique in that it will establish a consortium among the institutions that will both receive and share the materials. The collection of photographic material was shot by the late Harry Shunk and Janos Kender, and dates from approximately 1958 to 1973. Many of the images capture notable artists such as Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Robert Rauschenberg, Joan Miro, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Man Ray, Barnett Newman, and Alexander Calder.

The photographs were acquired by the Foundation between 2008 and 2012, several years after Shunk’s death. The Foundation went on to preserve, catalogue and digitize the works, eventually creating a free online archive.