Claes Oldenburg: The Street and The Store – MoMA

Claes Oldenburg (American, born Sweden 1929)
Floor Burger. 1962.
Canvas filled with foam rubber and cardboard boxes, painted with acrylic paint.
52 x 84 x 84” (132.1 x 213.4 x 213.4 cm)
Collection Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Purchase, 1967.
©1962 Claes Oldenburg Photo: Sean Weaver

Claes Oldenburg: The Street and The Store – MoMA “Claes Oldenburg: The Street and The Store” explores the beginnings of Oldenburg’s extraordinary career with an extensive and in-depth look at his artistic production from the first half of the 1960s.

April 14, 2013–August 05, 2013

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Source: Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)

Claes Oldenburg’s humorous and profound depictions of everyday objects have earned him a reputation as one of the most important artists of his generation. The exhibition focuses on two major bodies of work that redefined the concept of sculpture: The Street, an installation that conjures the gritty and chaotic atmosphere of downtown New York City, originally shown at the Judson Gallery of the Judson Memorial Church in 1960, and The Store, a large group of handmade, brightly painted sculptures depicting a cornucopia of commercial commodities and comestibles, presented in various iterations between 1961 and 1964.

In addition to The Street and The Store, Oldenburg’s Mouse Museum and Ray Gun Wing, self-contained “museums” created in the 1970s that house careful arrangements of the artists’ personal archives of American popular cultural and various tests and experiments from this studio, is installed in MoMA’s Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium. Claes Oldenburg: The Street and The Store and Claes Oldenburg: Mouse Museum/Ray Gun Wing is organized by Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien and The Museum of Modern Art. It is organized by Achim Hochdörfer, Curator, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien; and Ann Temkin, The Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator, and Paulina Pobocha, Assistant Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art.

Major support for the MoMA presentation is provided by The Dana Foundation, Donald B. Marron, Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis, Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III, The Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art, and The Junior Associates of The Museum of Modern Art.

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Claes Oldenburg: the sixties – Guggenheim Bilbao (exhibition, 2012-2013)