NeubergerMuseum of ArtMay 10th, 2011

2011-2012 Exhibition Schedule

Fall, 2011

Dana Schutz: If the Face Had Wheels

September 25th – December 18th, 2011/Theater and Window Galleries

If the Face Had Wheels is the first ten-year survey of paintings and drawings by Dana Schutz, recipient of the 2011 Roy R. Neuberger Exhibition Prize. Established in 2009, the Roy R. Neuberger Exhibition Prize is awarded every two years to an artist for an early career survey and monographic catalogue.

Dana Schutz combines fantasy and reality, humor and horror, to create figurative paintings that abound with expressionist energy. One of the most important young artists to emerge in the past ten years, she developed a distinctive visual style characterized by vibrant color and raw and tactile brushwork. The subjects of Schutz’s paintings spring from an absurdist sensibility as she invents imaginary stories or hypothetical situations that are bizarre and impossible, yet oddly compelling. This survey will feature thirty paintings and twelve drawings created by the artist from 2001 to the present and will include work from each of her endlessly inventive series from Frank from Observation (2002) portraying the fictional life of Frank, the last man on earth, as depicted by Schutz, the world’s last painter, to recent works from the Tourettes and Verbs series including Swimming, Smoking, Crying and Shaking, Cooking, Peeing (both 2009). The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue co-published by the NeubergerMuseum and Prestel with an essay by noted art historian Cary Levine and an in-depth interview with the artist. It will travel nationally to the MiamiArt Museum, the DenverArt Museum, and one additional institution in 2012.

For the Love of Art: Letters to Roy Neuberger

September 25th – December 23rd, 2011/South Gallery

This tribute exhibition includes a collection of personal notes, letters, cards, and drawings given by artists to Roy R. Neuberger (1903-2010) on the occasions of his fiftieth and seventy-fifth birthdays. Among the artists included in the exhibition are Milton Avery, Romare Bearden, Alexander Calder, Adolph Gottlieb, Jackson Pollock, Joan Snyder, and Mark Tobey. In notes and drawings to Mr. Neuberger, the artists express their admiration and appreciation for Roy Neuberger as a supporter of the arts and, often, as a personal friend. The exhibition includes a wide range of works from a rare 1908 sketch by Lyonel Feininger for the NeubergerMuseum’s well-known 1913 painting titled High Houses (1913) to a chewing gum sculpture by Hannah Wilke. Additional works from the Museum’s permanent collection, created by these “birthday book” artists, will also be on view.

Winter, 2012

American Vanguards: John Graham, Stuart Davis, Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, and Their Circle, 1927-1942

January 29th – April 29th, 2012/Theater and Window Galleries

In the 1920s through 1940s, the enigmatic and charismatic John Graham (1886–1961) and his circle of New York artists, which included Stuart Davis, Arshile Gorky, and Willem de Kooning, helped redefine ideas of what painting and sculpture could be. They, along with others in Graham’s orbit, such as Jackson Pollock and David Smith, played a critical role in developing and defining American modernism. American Vanguards showcases more than sixty works of art from this vital period that demonstrate the inter-connections, common sources, and shared stimuli among the members of Graham’s circle.

This exhibition, curated by notable scholars William C. Agee, Karen Wilkin, and Neuberger Museum Director Emeritus and former PurchaseCollege professor Irving Sandler, will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue co-published by the Addison Gallery of American Art and Yale University Press. This critical reconsideration sheds new light on the New YorkSchool, Abstract Expressionism, and the vitality of American modernism between the two world wars. This exhibition was organized by the Addison Gallery of American Art, PhillipsAcademy, Andover, Massachusetts and premieres at the Neuberger Museum of Art. American Vanguards is made possible with the generous support of The Henry Luce Foundation and the Dedalus Foundation.

Visionary Sugar: Works by Kiki Smith

February 4th – May 6th, 2012/South Gallery

The NeubergerMuseum will present an exhibition of new, multi-media work by internationally acclaimed artist Kiki Smith including gilded sculpture and relief work, drawings on Nepal paper, and tapestry designs. In VisionarySugar, Smith expansively engages the natural world, the spirit, and the cosmos through images of women, birds, the moon, and the stars, offering a glimpse of an earthly paradise. Among the new works created for this exhibition are two large, hanging sculptures depicting birds, flowers, and holy mandalas; large multi-colored, gilded reliefs of birds and starbursts; single birds as messengers or souls; an annunciation figure; and drawings of women. Over the years, Smith has demonstrated an uncanny ability to link religious imagery with earthly concerns. She is interested in the visualization of Eastern and Western belief systems, in the individual’s relation to mysticism, and in exploring and creating a space between heaven and earth.

Ongoing

Reframing American Art

Stairway Gallery

As we mourn the passing of Roy R. Neuberger, we also celebrate the life of our visionary founder. A supportive friend, humanist, and active promoter of contemporary art, Mr. Neuberger held ideals as a collector, educator, and generous patron that will live on at the Neuberger Museum of Art and in the hearts of all of us whom he touched with his kindness, his stories, his wisdom, and his wit. During the summer of 2011, the Neuberger Museum of Art will reinstall Reframing American Art to include many of the works Mr. Neuberger bequeathed to the Neuberger Museum of Art. The gallery will be closed between July 5 and July 15, 2011 for reinstallation.

The reinstallation will feature iconic works of modern art. Assembling the collection mainly in the 1940s and 1950s, Mr. Neuberger interacted with some of the most influential and important artists, dealers, museum professionals, and art critics of the day. He acquired most works within a year or two (sometimes less) of their execution date, often from the exhibitions in which they were first shown. Neuberger was not only at the forefront of purchasing art by canonical artists such as Stuart Davis, Arthur Dove, Helen Frankenthaler, Marsden Hartley, Hans Hoffman, Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, Horace Pippin, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and David Smith, but also by many artists once socially marginalized and only recuperated in relatively recent scholarship such as Romare Bearden, Hedda Sterne, Forrest Bess, Kenzo Okada, and Rufino Tamayo.

African Art and Culture

West Gallery

Important loans are added each year to give “new life” to the NeubergerMuseum’s permanent collection of African art, one which is nationally recognized and constitutes the only permanent display of African art in Westchester. The new loans include a rare Toma figure from Southern Guinea from the collection ofLaura and James J. Ross. The beauty and symmetry of the figure is expressed in its name Vollolobei which translates as “so beautiful that you stand watching it until the sun has set." Other major loans on display are a fine group of twelve bronze objects from the Chad region including five exceptional miniature equestrian figures attributed to the Kotoko people from the collection of Joanne and Arnold Syrop. This significant metal ensemble, displayed for the first time, also includes a Cameroon iron throwing knife from the collection of Julie Wilkser.This knife is the work of an accomplished metal smith who hammered bits of iron over an anvil into imaginative shapes. These extraordinary loans offer insights into important cultures not represented in the Neuberger’s permanent collection. They contribute to the broad historical and geographical range – from Mali to Mozambique – and offer significant insights into over thirty distinct African cultures.

Spring/Summer, 2012

The NeubergerMuseum will be closed for HVAC upgrade.