The Watari Museum of Contemporary Art ( ワタリウム美術館 ) , commonly referred to as Watari-um , is a museum of contemporary art located in Shibuya, Tokyo . Founded by Shizuko Watari and opened in 1990, the museum is near Gaienmae Station on the Tokyo Metro Ginza Line .
108-502: The institution promotes conceptual art and other non-commercial artists in Japan. It began as a commercial venue known as the Galerie Watari , which showcased a range of artists such as Sol LeWitt and Nam June Paik , as well as famous pop artists Andy Warhol and Keith Haring . The Watari-um became noted for its exhibitions of international and Japanese artists, while also reflecting on
216-707: A 17,000 sq ft (1,600 m ) lot at 53 West 53rd Street west of its existing building, sold it to developer Gerald D. Hines for $ 125 million in January 2007. Hines planned to build a skyscraper called Tower Verre on the site. Work on the tower was delayed because of a lack of funding following the Great Recession . In 2010, MoMA completed its merger with the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, New York , formally renaming it as MoMA PS1 . In 2011, MoMA acquired an adjacent building that housed
324-678: A capacity audience on April 23, 1974), various TV commercials, and Chris Cunningham 's music video for Björk 's All Is Full of Love . The MoMA library is located in Midtown Manhattan, with offsite storage in Long Island City, Queens. The noncirculating collection documents modern and contemporary art, including painting, sculpture, prints, photography, film, performance, and architecture from 1880–present. The collection includes 300,000 books, 1,000 periodicals, and 40,000 files about artists and artistic groups. Over 11,000 artist books are in
432-511: A casual, snapshot-like look and subject matter so apparently ordinary that it was hard to categorize". Under Szarkowski, it focused on a more traditionally modernist approach to the medium, one that emphasized documentary images and orthodox darkroom techniques. Peter Galassi (curator 1991–2011) worked under his predecessor, whereas Quentin Bajac (curator 2013–2018) was hired from the outside. The current David Dechman Senior Curator of Photography
540-613: A cube made from more than 1,000 light-coloured bricks that measure five meters on each side. It was installed at the Kivik Art Centre in Lilla Stenshuvud, Sweden, in 2014. In 1968, LeWitt began to conceive sets of guidelines or simple diagrams for his two-dimensional works drawn directly on the wall, executed first in graphite , then in crayon , later in colored pencil and finally in chromatically rich washes of India ink , bright acrylic paint, and other materials. Since he created
648-478: A different system of change to each of twenty-four possible combinations of a square divided into four equal parts, each containing one of the four basic types of lines LeWitt used (vertical, horizontal, diagonal left, and diagonal right). The result is four possible permutations for each of the twenty-four original units. The system used in Drawings Series I is what LeWitt termed 'Rotation,' Drawings Series II uses
756-692: A drawing with instructions. Installed in 2011, Lines in Four Directions in Flowers is made up of more than 7,000 plantings arranged in strategically configured rows. In his original proposal, the artist planned an installation of flower plantings of four different colors (white, yellow, red & blue) in four equal rectangular areas, in rows of four directions (vertical, horizontal, diagonal right & left) framed by evergreen hedges of about 2' height, with each color block comprising four to five species that bloom sequentially. In 2004, Six Curved Walls sculpture
864-503: A large-scale performance by Zhang Huan . Large retrospective exhibitions of the artists Larry Clark , Henry Darger , Jan Fabre , Federico Herrero, Mike Kelley , John Lurie , Barry McGee , Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzlinger, have been held at the museum over the last few decades. Sol LeWitt Solomon " Sol " LeWitt (September 9, 1928 – April 8, 2007) was an American artist linked to various movements, including conceptual art and minimalism . LeWitt came to fame in
972-556: A new annex designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and in the existing building, as well as expanded lobbies. In June 2017, the first phase of the $ 450 million expansion was completed. Spread over three floors of the art mecca off Fifth Avenue are 15,000 square-feet (about 1,400 m ) of reconfigured galleries, a new, second gift shop, a redesigned cafe and espresso bar, and facing the sculpture garden, two lounges graced with black marble quarried in France. The museum expansion project increased
1080-434: A redesign of the sculpture garden by Philip Johnson and relocation to its current home designed by Philip L. Goodwin and Edward Durell Stone , which opened in 1939. In later decades, the controversial decision to withdraw funding from the antiwar poster " And Babies " in 1969, and the subsequent protests, highlighted the museum's involvement in contemporary sociopolitical issues. It was also among several institutions to aid
1188-678: A significant departure from the rest of his practice, as he created these works with his own hands. LeWitt's gouaches are often created in series based on a specific motif. Past series have included Irregular Forms , Parallel Curves , Squiggly Brushstrokes and Web-like Grids . Although this loosely rendered composition may have been a departure from his earlier, more geometrically structured works visually, it nevertheless remained in alignment with his original artistic intent. LeWitt painstakingly made his own prints from his gouache compositions. In 2012, art advisor Heidi Lee Komaromi curated, "Sol LeWitt: Works on Paper 1983-2003", an exhibition revealing
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#17329238793731296-406: A standard version for his modular cubes, circa 1965: the negative space between the beams would stand to the positive space of the sculptural material itself in a ratio of 8.5:1, or 17 2 {\displaystyle {\frac {17}{2}}} . The material would also be painted white instead of black, to avoid the "expressiveness" of the black color of earlier, similar pieces. Both
1404-472: A support system for avant-garde artists, balancing its role as publisher, exhibition space, retail space, and community center for the downtown arts scene, in that sense emulating the network of aspiring artists LeWitt knew and enjoyed as a staff member at the Museum of Modern Art. LeWitt collaborated with architect Stephen Lloyd to design a synagogue for his congregation Beth Shalom Rodfe Zedek ; he conceptualized
1512-555: A system termed 'Mirror,' Drawings Series III uses 'Cross & Reverse Mirror,' and Drawings Series IV uses 'Cross Reverse'. In Wall Drawing #122 , first installed in 1972 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, the work contains "all combinations of two lines crossing, placed at random, using arcs from corners and sides, straight, not straight and broken lines" resulting in 150 unique pairings that unfold on
1620-600: A work of art for Paula Cooper Gallery 's inaugural show in 1968, an exhibition to benefit the Student Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, thousands of LeWitt's drawings have been installed directly on the surfaces of walls. Between 1969 and 1970 he created four "Drawings Series", which presented different combinations of the basic element that governed many of his early wall drawings. In each series he applied
1728-458: Is Roxana Marcoci, PhD. In 1932, museum founding director Alfred Barr stressed the importance of introducing "the only great art form peculiar to the 20th century" to "the American public which should appreciate good films and support them". Museum Trustee and film producer John Hay Whitney became the first chairman of the museum's Film Library from 1935 to 1951. The collection Whitney assembled with
1836-491: Is housed in a three-story 27,000-square-foot (2,500 m ) historic mill building in the heart of MASS MoCA's campus fully restored by Bruner/Cott and Associates architects (and outfitted with a sequence of new interior walls constructed to LeWitt's specifications.) The exhibition consists of 105 drawings — comprising nearly one acre of wall surface — that LeWitt created over 40 years from 1968 to 2007 and includes several drawings never before seen, some of which LeWitt created for
1944-483: Is not about the singular hand of the artist; it is the idea behind each work that surpasses the work itself. In the early 21st century, LeWitt's work, especially the wall drawings, has been critically acclaimed for its economic perspicacity. Though modest—most exist as simple instructions on a sheet of paper—the drawings can be made again and again and again, anywhere in the world, without the artist needing to be involved in their production. His auction record of $ 749,000
2052-763: Is now installed at Altona Town Hall, Hamburg . Other major exhibitions since include Sol LeWitt Drawings 1958-1992 , which was organized by the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, the Netherlands in 1992 which traveled over the next three years to museums in the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland , France, Spain, and the United States; and in 1996, the Museum of Modern Art, New York mounted a traveling survey exhibition: "Sol LeWitt Prints: 1970-1995". A major LeWitt retrospective
2160-526: Is organized around six curatorial departments: Architecture and Design, Drawings and Prints, Film, Media and Performance, Painting and Sculpture, and Photography. The MoMA's holdings include more than 150,000 individual pieces in addition to roughly 22,000 films and 4 million film stills. (Access to the collection of film stills ended in 2002, and the collection is stored in a vault in Hamlin, Pennsylvania . ). The collection houses such important and familiar works as
2268-475: Is regarded as one of the most important in the world. The Department of Photography was founded by Beaumont Newhall in 1940 and developed a world-renowned art photography collection under Edward Steichen (curator 1947–1961). Steichen's most notable and lasting exhibit, named The Family of Man , was seen by 9 million people. In 2003, the Family of Man photographic collection was added to UNESCO 's Memory of
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#17329238793732376-836: Is to help expand the collection and display of work by women, Latinos, Blacks, Asians, and other marginalized communities. In connection with the renovation, MoMA shifted its approach to presenting its holdings, moving away from separating the collection by disciplines such as painting, design, and works on paper toward an integrated chronological presentation that encompasses all areas of the collection. The Museum of Modern Art closed for another round of major renovations from June to October 2019. Upon reopening on October 21, 2019, MoMA added 47,000 square feet (4,400 m ) of gallery space, bringing its total floor area to 708,000 square feet (65,800 m ). The MoMA occasionally has sponsored and hosted temporary exhibition houses, which have reflected seminal ideas in architectural history. The MoMA
2484-790: The AXA Center , New York (1984–85); The Swiss Re headquarters Americas in Armonk, New York, the Atlanta City Hall , Atlanta ( Wall Drawing #581 , 1989/90); the Walter E. Washington Convention Center , Washington, DC ( Wall Drawing #1103 , 2003); the Conrad Hotel , New York ( Loopy Doopy (Blue and Purple) , 1999); the Albright-Knox Art Gallery , Buffalo ( Wall Drawing #1268: Scribbles: Staircase (AKAG) , 2006/2010); Akron Art Museum , Akron (2007);
2592-617: The American Folk Art Museum on West 53rd Street. The building had been completed in 2001 to designs by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects and was sold in connection with a financial restructuring of the Folk Art Museum. In January 2014, MoMA decided to raze the American Folk Art Museum, which was between MoMA's existing structure and the proposed tower at 53 West 53rd Street. The architectural community protested
2700-549: The CIA in its efforts to engage in cultural propaganda during the Cold War . Major expansions in the 1980s and the early 21st century, including the selection of Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi for a significant renovation, nearly doubled MoMA's space for exhibitions and programs. The 2000s saw the formal merger with the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center , and in 2019, another major renovation added significant gallery space. In 2022, MoMA
2808-736: The Columbus Circle Subway Station , New York; The Jewish Museum (New York) , New York; the Green Center for Physics at MIT , Cambridge ( Bars of Colors Within Squares (MIT) , 2007); the Embassy of the United States in Berlin ; the Wadsworth Atheneum ; and John Pearson's House, Oberlin, Ohio . The artist's last public wall drawing, Wall Drawing #1259: Loopy Doopy (Springfield) (2008), is at
2916-625: The Heckscher Building on Fifth Avenue, it opened just days after the Wall Street Crash . The museum, America's first devoted exclusively to modern art, was led by A. Conger Goodyear as president and Abby Rockefeller as treasurer, with Alfred H. Barr Jr . as its first director. Under Barr's leadership, the museum's collection rapidly expanded, beginning with an inaugural exhibition of works by European modernists. Despite financial challenges, including opposition from John D. Rockefeller Jr. ,
3024-621: The Korean War , first in California , then Japan , and finally Korea . LeWitt moved to New York City in 1953 and set up a studio on the Lower East Side, in the old Ashkenazi Jewish settlement on Hester Street . During this time he studied at the School of Visual Arts while also pursuing his interest in design at Seventeen magazine, where he did paste-ups, mechanicals, and photostats. In 1955, he
3132-652: The My Lai Massacre . The MoMA had promised to fund and circulate the poster, but after seeing the 2-by-3-foot (0.61 m × 0.91 m) poster, MoMA pulled financing for the project at the last minute. MoMA's board of trustees included Nelson Rockefeller and William S. Paley (head of CBS), who reportedly "hit the ceiling" on seeing the proofs of the poster. The poster was included shortly thereafter in MoMA's Information exhibition of July 2 to September 20, 1970, curated by Kynaston McShine. In 1971, after protests outside
3240-664: The Rockefeller Guest House at 242 East 52nd Street was completed in 1950, some MoMA functions were held in the house until 1964. In 1937, MoMA had shifted to offices and basement galleries in the Time-Life Building in Rockefeller Center . Its permanent and current home, now renovated, designed in the International Style by the modernist architects Philip L. Goodwin and Edward Durell Stone , opened to
3348-570: The School of Visual Arts , during the late 1960s. In 1980, LeWitt left New York for Spoleto, Italy . After returning to the United States in the late 1980s, LeWitt made Chester, Connecticut , his primary residence. He died at age 78 in New York from cancer complications. LeWitt is regarded as a founder of both Minimal and Conceptual art . His prolific two and three-dimensional work ranges from wall drawings (over 1200 of which have been executed) to hundreds of works on paper extending to structures in
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3456-421: The cube , a form that influenced the artist's thinking from the time that he first became an artist. After creating an early body of work made up of closed-form wooden objects, heavily lacquered by hand, in the mid-1960s he "decided to remove the skin altogether and reveal the structure." This skeletal form, the radically simplified open cube, became a basic building block of the artist's three-dimensional work. In
3564-666: The "airy" synagogue building, with its shallow dome supported by "exuberant wooden roof beams", an homage to the wooden synagogues of eastern Europe . In 1981, LeWitt was invited by the Fairmount Park Art Association (currently known as the Association for Public Art ) to propose a public artwork for a site in Fairmount Park . He selected the long, rectangular plot of land known as the Reilly Memorial and submitted
3672-406: The 1960s, LeWitt denied that approaches such as Minimalism , Conceptualism , and Process Art were merely technical or illustrative of philosophy. In his Paragraphs on Conceptual Art , LeWitt asserted that Conceptual art was neither mathematical nor intellectual but intuitive, given that the complexity inherent to transforming an idea into a work of art was fraught with contingencies. LeWitt's art
3780-796: The German Film (1947), traces the birth of Nazism from the cinema of the Weimar Republic and helped lay the foundation of modern film criticism . Under the Museum of Modern Art Department of Film , the film collection includes more than 25,000 titles and ranks as one of the world's finest museum archives of international film art. The department owns prints of many familiar feature-length movies, including Citizen Kane and Vertigo , but its holdings also contains many less-traditional pieces, including Andy Warhol 's eight-hour Empire , Fred Halsted 's gay pornographic L.A. Plays Itself (screened before
3888-567: The MoMA was at the center of a controversy over its decision to withdraw funding from the iconic antiwar poster And Babies . In 1969, the Art Workers Coalition , a group of New York City artists who opposed the Vietnam War , in collaboration with Museum of Modern Art members Arthur Drexler and Elizabeth Shaw, created an iconic protest poster called And babies . The poster uses an image by photojournalist Ronald L. Haeberle and references
3996-586: The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Dia:Beacon , The Jewish Museum in Manhattan, Pérez Art Museum Miami , Florida, MASS MoCA , North Adams, Massachusetts Institute of Technology List Art Center's Public Art Collection, Cambridge , National Gallery of Art , Washington D.C., and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden . The erection of Double Negative Pyramid by Sol LeWitt at Europos Parkas in Vilnius, Lithuania
4104-534: The United States , and the third most-visited U.S. art museum. This attendance was 89 percent higher than in 2021, but still well below the pre-COVID attendance in 2019. The idea for the Museum of Modern Art was developed in 1929 primarily by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller , wife of John D. Rockefeller Jr. , and two of her friends, Lillie P. Bliss and Mary Quinn Sullivan . They became known variously as "the Ladies" or "the adamantine ladies". They rented modest quarters for
4212-690: The United States Courthouse in Springfield, Massachusetts (designed by architect Moshe Safdie ). Wall Drawing #599: Circles 18 (1989) — a bull's eye of concentric circles in alternating bands of yellow, blue, red and white — was installed at the lobby of the Jewish Community Center , New York, in 2013. In the 1980s, in particular after a trip to Italy, LeWitt started using gouache , an opaque water-based paint, to produce free-flowing abstract works in contrasting colors. These represented
4320-564: The Wadsworth Atheneum's sixth MATRIX exhibition, providing instructions for a second wall drawing. MoMA gave LeWitt his first retrospective in 1978-79. The exhibition traveled to various American venues. For the 1987 Skulptur Projekte Münster , Germany, he realized Black Form: Memorial to the Missing Jews , a rectangular wall of black concrete blocks for the center of a plaza in front of an elegant, white Neoclassical government building; it
4428-498: The World Register in recognition of its historical value. Steichen's hand-picked successor, John Szarkowski (curator 1962–1991), guided the department with several notable exhibitions, including 1967s New Documents that presented photographs by Diane Arbus , Lee Friedlander , and Garry Winogrand and is said to have "represented a shift in emphasis" and "identified a new direction in photography: pictures that seemed to have
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4536-536: The adjacent Museum Tower, and mechanical spaces and equipment within the tower were added or relocated. MoMA reopened on November 20, 2004. The renovation received mixed reception. John Updike wrote in The New Yorker that the new structure "has the enchantment of a bank after hours, of a honeycomb emptied of honey and flooded with a soft glow", while Roberta Smith of The New York Times said MoMA had an "overly refined building, whose poor layout shortchanges
4644-484: The associate director and curator of prints and drawings at the Fogg Museum at Harvard University , was referred to in those days as a "collector of curators". Goodyear asked him to recommend a director, and Sachs suggested Alfred H. Barr Jr. , a promising young protégé . Under Barr's guidance, the museum's holdings quickly expanded from an initial gift of eight prints and one drawing. Its first successful loan exhibition
4752-455: The collection. The libraries are open by appointment to all researchers. The library's catalog is called "Dadabase". Dadabase includes records for all of the material in the library, including books, artist books , exhibition catalogs , special collections materials, and electronic resources. The MoMA's collection of artist books includes works by Ed Ruscha , Marcel Broodthaers , Susan Bee , Carl Andre , and David Horvitz . Additionally,
4860-600: The design project for the expansion. Despite these expansion projects, MoMA's physical space had never been able to accommodate its growing collection. On June 14, 1984 the Women Artists Visibility Event (W.A.V.E.), a demonstration of 400 women artists, was held in front of the newly renovated Museum of Modern Art to protest the lack of female representation in its opening exhibition, "An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture". The exhibition featured 165 artists; only 14 of those were women. By
4968-438: The draftsmen to fill in areas of the wall by scribbling with graphite. The scribbling occurs at six different densities, which are indicated on the artist's diagrams and then mapped out in string on the surface of the wall. The gradations of scribble density produce a continuum of tone that implies three dimensions. The largest scribble wall drawing, Wall Drawing #1268 , is on view at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery . According to
5076-446: The duration of an exhibition; they are then destroyed, giving the work in its physical form an ephemeral quality. They can be installed, removed, and then reinstalled in another location, as many times as required for exhibition purposes. When transferred to another location, the number of walls can change only by ensuring that the proportions of the original diagram are retained. Permanent murals by LeWitt can be found at, among others,
5184-676: The end of the 20th century, MoMA had 100,000 objects in its collection, an increase from the 40,000 items it had in 1970. After the Dorset Hotel adjacent to the museum was placed for sale in 1996, MoMA quickly purchased it. The next year, the museum began planning a major renovation and expansion, selecting Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi in December 1997. The project nearly doubled the space for MoMA's exhibitions and programs, and features 630,000 square feet (59,000 m ) of space. Taniguchi's initial plan called for two structures, one each to
5292-543: The exhibition "Selections from The LeWitt Collection" at the Weatherspoon Art Museum assembled approximately 100 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, and photographs, among them works by Andre, Alice Aycock , Bernd and Hilla Becher , Jan Dibbets , Jackie Ferrara , Gilbert and George , Alex Katz , Robert Mangold , Brice Marden , Mario Merz , Shirin Neshat , Pat Steir , and many other artists. LeWitt's work
5400-499: The film library was Iris Barry , a British film critic and author whose three decades of work in collecting films and presenting them in artistic and historical contexts gained recognition for the cinema. Barry and her successors built a collection comprising some 8000 titles. Exiled film scholar Siegfried Kracauer worked at the MoMA film archive on a psychological history of German film between 1941 and 1943. The result of his study, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of
5508-478: The first cement Cube was built in a park in Basel . From 1990 onwards, LeWitt conceived multiple variations on a tower to be constructed using concrete blocks. In a shift away from his well-known geometric vocabulary of forms, the works LeWitt realized in the late 1990s indicate vividly the artist's growing interest in somewhat random curvilinear shapes and highly saturated colors. In 2007, LeWitt conceived 9 Towers ,
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#17329238793735616-412: The first of its kind in the U.S. The MoMA Library includes about 300,000 books and exhibition catalogs, more than 1,000 periodical titles and more than 40,000 files of ephemera about individual artists and groups. The archives hold primary source material related to the history of modern and contemporary art. The museum attracted 2,190,440 visitors in 2022, making it the 4th most-visited museum in
5724-837: The following: It also holds works by a wide range of influential European and American artists including Auguste Rodin , Henri Matisse , Pablo Picasso , Georges Braque , Joan Miró , Aristide Maillol , Piet Mondrian , Marcel Duchamp , Paul Klee , Fernand Léger , René Magritte , Henry Moore , Alberto Giacometti , Georgia O'Keeffe , Edward Hopper , Walker Evans , Dorothea Lange , Arshile Gorky , Hans Hofmann , Franz Kline , Willem de Kooning , Jackson Pollock , Mark Rothko , David Smith , Helen Frankenthaler , Morris Louis , Kenneth Noland , Robert Rauschenberg , Frank Stella , Andy Warhol , Roy Lichtenstein , Jean-Michel Basquiat and hundreds of others. The MoMA photography collection consists of over 25,000 works by photographers, journalists, scientists, entrepreneurs, and amateurs, and
5832-427: The form of towers , pyramids , geometric forms, and progressions. These works range in size from books and gallery-sized installations to monumental outdoor pieces. LeWitt's first serial sculptures were created in the 1960s using the modular form of the square in arrangements of varying visual complexity. In Issue 5 of 0 To 9 magazine , LeWitt's work 'Sentences on Conceptual Art' was published.This piece became one of
5940-510: The future art critic and writer, Lucy Lippard who worked as a page in the library. Curator Dorothy Canning Miller 's now famous 1960 "Sixteen Americans" exhibition with work by Jasper Johns , Robert Rauschenberg , and Frank Stella created a swell of excitement and discussion among the community of artists with whom LeWitt associated. LeWitt also became friends with Hanne Darboven , Eva Hesse , and Robert Smithson . LeWitt taught at several New York schools, including New York University and
6048-400: The gallery walls. LeWitt further expanded on this theme, creating variations such as Wall Drawing #260 at the Museum of Modern Art , New York, which systematically runs through all possible two-part combinations of arcs and lines. Conceived in 1995, Wall Drawing #792: Black rectangles and squares underscores LeWitt's early interest in the intersections between art and architecture. Spanning
6156-454: The help of film curator Iris Barry was so successful that in 1937 the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences commended the museum with an award "for its significant work in collecting films ... and for the first time making available to the public the means of studying the historical and aesthetic development of the motion picture as one of the major arts". The first curator and founder of
6264-454: The hugely successful and now famous Picasso retrospective of 1939–40, held in conjunction with the Art Institute of Chicago . In its range of presented works, it represented a significant reinterpretation of Picasso for future art scholars and historians. This was wholly masterminded by Barr, a Picasso enthusiast, and the exhibition lionized Picasso as the greatest artist of the time, setting
6372-414: The late 1960s with his wall drawings and "structures" (a term he preferred to "sculptures") but was prolific in a wide range of media including drawing, printmaking, photography, painting, installation, and artist's books. He has been the subject of hundreds of solo exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world since 1965. The first biography of the artist, Sol LeWitt: A Life of Ideas , by Lary Bloom,
6480-429: The late 1990s and early 2000s, he created highly saturated colorful acrylic wall drawings. While their forms are curvilinear, playful and seem almost random, they are also drawn according to an exacting set of guidelines. The bands are a standard width, for example, and no colored section may touch another section of the same color. In 2005 LeWitt began a series of 'scribble' wall drawings, so termed because they required
6588-500: The library has subscription electronic resources along with Dadabase. These include journal databases (such as JSTOR and Art Full Text), auction results indexes (ArtFact and Artnet ), the ARTstor image database, and WorldCat union catalog. MoMA's Department of Architecture and Design was founded in 1932 as the first museum department in the world dedicated to the intersection of architecture and design. The department's first director
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#17329238793736696-589: The limitations of the canvas for more extensive constructions. "Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective", a collaboration between the Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG), MASS MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art), and the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) opened to the public in 2008 at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts. The exhibition will be on view for 25 years and
6804-414: The lone Vincent van Gogh exhibition on November 4, 1935. Containing an unprecedented 66 oils and 50 drawings from the Netherlands , as well as poignant excerpts from the artist's letters, it was a major public success due to Barr's arrangement of the exhibit, and became "a precursor to the hold van Gogh has to this day on the contemporary imagination". The museum also gained international prominence with
6912-500: The mid-1960s, LeWitt began to work with the open cube: twelve identical linear elements connected at eight corners to form a skeletal structure. From 1969, he would conceive many of his modular structures on a large scale, to be constructed in aluminum or steel by industrial fabricators. Several of LeWitt's cube structures stood at approximate eye level. The artist introduced bodily proportion to his fundamental sculptural unit at this scale. Following early experimentation LeWitt settled on
7020-505: The model for all the museum's retrospectives that were to follow. Boy Leading a Horse was briefly contested over ownership by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum . In 1941, MoMA hosted the ground-breaking exhibition, " Indian Art of the United States ", curated by Frederic Huntington Douglas and Rene d'Harnoncourt , that changed the way Native American arts were viewed by the public and exhibited in art museums. Abby Rockefeller's son Nelson
7128-468: The most influential cultural institutions globally devoted to modern and contemporary art . At the same time, MoMA has long faced criticism for developing and perpetuating Eurocentric narratives of modernism and for its insufficient focus on expanding access to socioeconomically underprivileged groups. The museum has been involved in controversies regarding its labor practices, and the institution's labor union, founded in 1971, has been described as
7236-480: The most widely cited artists' writings of the 1960s, exploring the relationship between art, practice and art criticism . In 1979, LeWitt participated in the design for the Lucinda Childs Dance Company's piece Dance . In the early 1960s, LeWitt first began to create his "structures," a term he used to describe his three-dimensional work. His frequent use of open, modular structures originates from
7344-441: The museum (as well as to modern art itself) and refused to release funds for the venture, which had to be obtained from other sources and resulted in the frequent shifts of location. Nevertheless, he eventually donated the land for the current site of the museum, plus other gifts over time, and thus became in effect one of its greatest benefactors. During that time, the museum initiated many more exhibitions of noted artists, such as
7452-573: The museum garden, and named it in honor of his mother, the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden . The Rockefeller family and he have retained a close association with the museum throughout its history, with the Rockefeller Brothers Fund funding the institution since 1947. Both David Rockefeller Jr. and Sharon Percy Rockefeller (wife of former senator Jay Rockefeller ) sit on the board of trustees. After
7560-438: The museum meant to spur inclusion of African Americans Richard Hunt was the first African American sculptor to have a major solo retrospective at the museum. In 1983, the museum more than doubled its gallery space, increased the curatorial department by 30%, and added an auditorium, two restaurants, and a bookstore in conjunction with the construction of the 56-story Museum Tower adjoining the museum. Architect César Pelli led
7668-477: The museum moved to several temporary locations in its early years, and John D. Rockefeller Jr. eventually donated the land for its permanent site. From the 1930s through the 1950s, MoMA gained international recognition with landmark exhibitions, such as Barr's influential "Cubism and Abstract Art" in 1936, a retrospective of Pablo Picasso 's works organized in 1939–40 and the "Indian Art of the United States" exhibition in 1941. Abby Rockefeller's son, Nelson , became
7776-420: The museum's president in 1939, playing a key role in its expansion and publicity. His brother, David Rockefeller , joined the board in 1948 and continued the family's close association with the museum. Significant events during this period included a major fire in 1958, which destroyed a painting by Claude Monet and led to the evacuation of other artworks. The museum's architectural evolution also continued, with
7884-510: The new museum in the Heckscher Building at 730 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, and it opened to the public on November 7, 1929, nine days after the Wall Street Crash . Abby Rockefeller had invited A. Conger Goodyear , the former president of the board of trustees of the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York , to become president of the new museum. Abby became treasurer. At the time, it
7992-402: The next month, MoMA relocated its public-facing operations to a temporary facility called MoMA QNS in Long Island City , Queens. The overall project, including an increase in MoMA's endowment to cover operating expenses, cost $ 858 million in total; the renovation of the Midtown Manhattan building alone cost $ 425 million. During the project, new gallery space was added on the first floor of
8100-421: The planned demolition in part because that building was relatively new, having been completed in 2001. MoMA decided to proceed with the demolition because the American Folk Art Museum was in the way of MoMA's planned expansion, which included exhibition space within 53 West 53rd Street. The tower, designed by Jean Nouvel and called 53W53 , received construction approval in 2014. Around the same time as 53W53
8208-529: The position of Japanese art in the international context. The museum also organizes lectures, learning workshops for children, and small project room exhibitions. From 1972 to 1989, Shizuko Watari was the director of the Galerie Watari in Tokyo, which organized exhibitions for Japanese and international artists including Nam June Paik, Keith Haring, Marcel Broodthaers , On Kawara and Shinro Ohtake . The gallery
8316-550: The principle of his work, LeWitt's wall drawings are usually executed by people other than the artist himself. Even after his death, people are still making these drawings. He would therefore eventually use teams of assistants to create such works. Writing about making wall drawings, LeWitt himself observed in 1971 that "each person draws a line differently and each person understands words differently". Between 1968 and his death in 2007, LeWitt created more than 1,270 wall drawings. The wall drawings, executed on-site, generally exist for
8424-459: The project shortly before his death. Furthermore, the artist was the subject of exhibitions at P.S. 1 Contemporary Center, Long Island City ( Concrete Blocks ); the Addison Gallery of American Art , Andover ( Twenty-Five Years of Wall Drawings, 1968-1993 ); and Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford ( Incomplete Cubes ), which traveled to three art museums in the United States. At
8532-510: The public indefinitely, as an experimental exhibition and performance space. In addition, the PS1 space would be available while the 53rd Street complex was closed for major renovations. MoMA broke ground on the 53rd Street project in May 2001. Over the next year, the museum gradually closed two-thirds of its galleries and moved some of its exhibits online. The Midtown building closed completely in May 2002;
8640-498: The public on May 10, 1939, attended by an illustrious company of 6,000 people, and with an opening address via radio from the White House by President Franklin D. Roosevelt . In 1958, workers re-clad the MoMA building's second floor with a glass facade overlooking the sculpture garden. On April 15, 1958, a fire on the second floor destroyed an 18-foot-long (5.5 m) Monet Water Lilies painting (the current Monet Water Lilies
8748-579: The publicly accessible space by 25% compared to when the Tanaguchi building was completed in 2004. The expansion allowed for even more of the museum's collection of nearly 200,000 works to be displayed. The new spaces also allow visitors to enjoy a relaxing sit-down in one of the two new lounges, or even have a fully catered meal. The two new lounges include "The Marlene Hess and James D. Zirin Lounge" and "The Daniel and Jane Och Lounge". The goal of this renovation
8856-592: The ratio and the color were arbitrary aesthetic choices, but once taken they were used consistently in several pieces which typify LeWitt's "modular cube" works. Museums holding specimens of LeWitt's modular cube works have published lesson suggestions for elementary education, meant to encourage children to investigate the mathematical properties of the artworks. Beginning in the mid-1980s, LeWitt composed some of his sculptures from stacked cinder blocks, still generating variations within self-imposed restrictions. At this time, he began to work with concrete blocks. In 1985,
8964-527: The third and fourth floors were evacuated to the Whitney Museum of American Art , which abutted on the 54th Street side. Among the paintings that were rescued was A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte , which had been on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago . Visitors and employees trapped above the fire were evacuated to the roof, and then jumped to the roof of an adjoining townhouse. In 1969,
9072-541: The third floor makes for visual correspondence between artworks displayed in the exhibition rooms of the art gallery. The top floors accommodate the offices and the owner's residence. Beginning with an exhibition of Joseph Beuys in 1991, the Watari-um became noted for its exhibitions of significant international artists. The institution also helped to establish connections between Japanese and Asian artists, through projects such as Chinese Contemporary Art 1997 , which included
9180-872: The time of his death, LeWitt had just organized a retrospective of his work at the Allen Memorial Art Museum in Oberlin, Ohio . At Naples Sol LeWitt. L'artista e i suoi artisti opened at the Museo Madre on December 15, 2012, running until April 1, 2013. LeWitt's works are found in the most important museum collections including: Tate Modern , London, the Van Abbemuseum , Eindhoven, National Museum of Serbia in Belgrade, Centre Georges Pompidou , Paris, Hallen für Neue Kunst Schaffhausen, Switzerland, Australian National Gallery , Canberra, Australia, Guggenheim Museum ,
9288-470: The two floors of the Barbara Gladstone Gallery, Brussels, this work consists of varying combinations of black rectangles, creating an irregular grid-like pattern. LeWitt, who had moved to Spoleto, Italy, in the late 1970s credited his transition from graphite pencil or crayon to vivid ink washes, to his encounter with the frescoes of Giotto , Masaccio , and other early Florentine painters. In
9396-786: The variety of techniques LeWitt employed on paper during the final decades of his life. From 1966, LeWitt's interest in seriality led to his production of more than 50 artist's books throughout his career; he later donated many examples to the Wadsworth Athenaeum's library. In 1976 LeWitt helped found Printed Matter, Inc , a for-profit art space in the Tribeca neighborhood of New York City with fellow artists and critics Lucy Lippard , Carol Androcchio, Amy Baker (Sandback), Edit DeAk , Mike Glier, Nancy Linn, Walter Robinson , Ingrid Sischy , Pat Steir , Mimi Wheeler, Robin White and Irena von Zahn. LeWitt
9504-578: The west and east of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, which was to be enlarged from its original configuration. The Peggy and David Rockefeller Building on the western portion of the site houses the main exhibition gallerie, while the Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building provides space for classrooms, auditoriums, teacher-training workshops, and the museum's expanded library and archives. MoMA began
9612-427: The world's greatest collection of Modern art". Witold Rybczynski of Slate wrote: "Most of what has been written about the new MoMA has lauded its minimalist interiors, which, even if they don't exactly disappear, have an opulently ethereal quality. [...] Yet this urban building is not experienced only from inside—and, seen from the sidewalk, Taniguchi's architecture does anything but fade away." MoMA, which owned
9720-504: The year 2000 with the activation of a 1999 agreement formalizing its affiliation with the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center , an independent contemporary art organization which had been founded in nearby Long Island City , Queens, New York in 1971. An agreement provided for a 10-year merger process, allowing gradual coordination and consolidation of programming and staff. The location in Queens, a re-purposed former public school, would remain open to
9828-549: Was Philip Johnson who served as curator between 1932 and 1934 and between 1946 and 1954. The next departmental head was Arthur Drexler , who was curator from 1951 to 1956 and then served as head until 1986. The collection consists of 28,000 works including architectural models, drawings, and photographs. One of the highlights of the collection is the Mies van der Rohe Archive. It also includes works from such legendary architects and designers as Frank Lloyd Wright , Paul László ,
9936-533: Was America's premier museum devoted exclusively to modern art, and the first of its kind in Manhattan to exhibit European modernism. One of Rockefeller's early recruits for the museum staff was the noted Japanese-American photographer Soichi Sunami (at that time best known for his portraits of modern dance pioneer Martha Graham ), who served the museum as its official documentary photographer from 1930 until 1968. Goodyear enlisted Paul J. Sachs and Frank Crowninshield to join him as founding trustees. Sachs,
10044-572: Was a graphic designer in the office of architect I.M. Pei for a year. Around that time, LeWitt also discovered the work of the late 19th-century photographer Eadweard Muybridge , whose studies in sequence and locomotion were an early influence for him. These experiences, combined with an entry-level job as a night receptionist and clerk he took in 1960 at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, would influence LeWitt's later work. At MoMA, LeWitt's co-workers included fellow artists Robert Ryman , Dan Flavin , Gene Beery , and Robert Mangold , and
10152-444: Was a signal innovator of the genre of the "artist's book," a term that was coined for a 1973 exhibition curated by Dianne Perry Vanderlip at Moore College of Art and Design , Philadelphia. Printed Matter was one of the first organizations dedicated to creating and distributing artists' books, incorporating self-publishing, small-press publishing, and artist networks and collectives. For LeWitt and others, Printed Matter also served as
10260-455: Was a significant event in the history of art in post Berlin Wall era. Sol LeWitt was one of the main figures of his time; he transformed the process of art-making by questioning the fundamental relationship between an idea, the subjectivity of the artist, and the artwork a given idea might produce. While many artists were challenging modern conceptions of originality, authorship, and artistic genius in
10368-492: Was acquired shortly after the fire as a replacement). The fire was started by workmen installing air conditioning, who were smoking near paint cans, sawdust, and a canvas drop cloth. One worker was killed by the fire, and several firefighters were treated for smoke inhalation. Most of the paintings on the floor had previously been removed from the work area, although large paintings including the Monet had remained in place. Art works on
10476-450: Was approved, MoMA unveiled its expansion plans, which encompass space in 53W53, as well as an annex on the former site of the American Folk Art Museum. The expansion plan was developed by the architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler . Following a controversy over the plans, MoMA split the plan into three phases in January 2016. The plan would add 50,000 square feet (4,600 m ) of gallery space in 53W53, in
10584-512: Was expanded and became the Watari Museum of Contemporary Art. Is also known as the Watari-um, which derives from the combination of Watari and museum. The 6-story museum was designed by Swiss architect Mario Botta and opened in September 1990. The first floor is devoted entirely to the museum shop. The fourth floor offers a bird’s eye view of works displayed below, and the glass-walled mezzanine of
10692-533: Was first publicly exhibited in 1964 in a group show curated by Dan Flavin at the Kaymar Gallery, New York. Dan Graham 's John Daniels Gallery later gave him his first solo show in 1965. In 1966, he participated in the " Primary Structures " exhibit at the Jewish Museum in New York (a seminal show which helped define the minimalist movement), submitting an untitled, open modular cube of 9 units. The same year he
10800-456: Was in November 1929, displaying paintings by Van Gogh , Gauguin , Cézanne , and Seurat . First housed in six rooms of galleries and offices on the 12th floor of Manhattan's Heckscher Building, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, the museum moved into three more temporary locations within the next 10 years. Abby Rockefeller's husband, John D. Rockefeller Jr., was adamantly opposed to
10908-553: Was included in the "10" exhibit at Dwan Gallery , New York. He was later invited by Harald Szeemann to participate in "When Attitude Becomes Form," at the Kunsthalle Bern , Switzerland, in 1969. Interviewed in 1993 about those years LeWitt remarked, "I decided I would make color or form recede and proceed in a three-dimensional way." The Gemeentemuseum in The Hague presented his first retrospective exhibition in 1970, and his work
11016-757: Was installed on the hillside slope of Crouse College on Syracuse University campus. The concrete block sculpture consists of six undulating walls, each 12 feet high, and spans 140 feet. The sculpture was designed and constructed to mark the inauguration of Nancy Cantor as the 11th Chancellor of Syracuse University . Since the early 1960s he and his wife, Carol Androccio, gathered nearly 9,000 works of art through purchases, in trades with other artists and dealers, or as gifts. In this way he acquired works by approximately 750 artists, including Dan Flavin , Robert Ryman , Hanne Darboven , Eva Hesse , Donald Judd , On Kawara , Kazuko Miyamoto , Carl Andre , Dan Graham , Hans Haacke , Gerhard Richter , and others. In 2007,
11124-598: Was later shown in a major mid-career retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art , New York in 1978. In 1972/1973, LeWitt's first museum shows in Europe were mounted at the Kunsthalle Bern and the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford . In 1975, Lewitt created "The Location of a Rectangle for the Hartford Atheneum" for the third MATRIX exhibition at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. Later that year, he participated in
11232-561: Was organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2000. The exhibition traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago , and Whitney Museum of American Art , New York. In 2006, LeWitt's Drawing Series… was displayed at Dia:Beacon and was devoted to the 1970s drawings by the conceptual artist . Drafters and assistants drew directly on the walls using graphite , colored pencil , crayon , and chalk . The works were based on LeWitt's complex principles, which eliminated
11340-534: Was published by Wesleyan University Press in the spring of 2019. LeWitt was born in Hartford, Connecticut , to a family of Jewish immigrants from Russia. His father died when he was 6. His mother took him to art classes at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. After earning a BFA from Syracuse University in 1949, LeWitt traveled to Europe where he was exposed to Old Master paintings. Shortly thereafter, he served in
11448-516: Was selected by the board of trustees to become its president, in 1939, at the age of 30; he was a flamboyant leader and became the prime instigator and funding source of MoMA's publicity, acquisitions, and subsequent expansion into new headquarters on 53rd Street. His brother, David Rockefeller , joined the museum's board of trustees in 1948, and took over the presidency when Nelson was elected governor of New York in 1958. David Rockefeller subsequently employed noted architect Philip Johnson to redesign
11556-490: Was set in 2014 for his gouache on paperboard piece Wavy Brushstroke (1995) at Sotheby's , New York. Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art ( MoMA ) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan , New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues . The institution was conceived in 1929 by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller , Lillie P. Bliss , and Mary Quinn Sullivan . Initially located in
11664-402: Was the 17th most-visited art museum in the world and the 4th most-visited museum in the United States. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th-century to the present, and includes over 200,000 works of architecture and design , drawing , painting , sculpture , photography , prints , illustrated and artist's books , film , as well as electronic media . The museum is considered one of
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