Ed Ruscha: Standard Study #2, 1962
Whitney Museum of American Art
Gift of The American Contemporary Art Foundation, Inc.
Leonard A. Lauder
©Ed Ruscha
Whitney Museum presents ‘Five Decades of Gifts’ ‘Shaping a Collection: Five Decades of Gifts’. Whitney Museum of American Art exhibits a selection of works given to the Museum over the past fifty years by some of its most magnanimous donors. July 17 to October 19, 2014.]]>
Source: Whitney Museum of American Art
While presenting only a small portion of the gifts the Museum has received during the last fifty years, this exhibition honors benefactors who recognized that a museum’s collection is its foundation. Among those whose transformative gifts are on view are Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz, Sondra Gilman, Emily Fisher Landau, the Lannan Foundation, Leonard A. Lauder, Jean and Howard Lipman, Adriana and Robert Mnuchin, and Diane and Tom Tuft. The exhibition also features a number of gifts from artists, including works donated by Alex Katz, Brice Marden, and Andy Warhol.
From its inception, the Whitney’s collection grew primarily through the foresight and generosity of individual donors, beginning with Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s personal collection of more than five hundred works of art. Today nearly two-thirds of the Museum’s holdings were received as gifts; many of these works are now considered icons of the Museum’s collection. In the nearly five decades since the Whitney opened its Marcel Breuer building at 945 Madison Avenue in 1966, the collection has grown from 2,300 to more than 21,000 works.
In spring 2015, the Whitney will resume its exhibition program when it opens its new Renzo Piano–designed home at the corner of Gansevoort and Washington Streets, adjacent to the southernmost entrance to the High Line. For the inaugural exhibition, all of the galleries will be filled with works from the Museum’s permanent collection. On the eve of the Whitney’s move downtown, Shaping a Collection gives a small indication of the full depth of what’s to come in the Museum’s new home and testifies to the profound importance of gifts to building a great collection.
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