The newly restored Thannhauser Gallery will open to the public with a selection of canvases, works on paper, and sculpture bequeathed to the museum by the important art dealer and collector Justin K. Thannhauser (1892-1976). Representing the earliest works in the museum's collection, the Thannhauser holdings include significant works by Cezanne, Degas, Gauguin, Manet, Monet, Picasso, Pissarro, and Van Gogh. Thannhauser's commitment to supporting the early careers of such artists as Vasily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, and Paul Klee, and to educating the public about modern art, paralleled the vision of the Guggenheim Foundation's originator, Solomon R. Guggenheim. Among the works he gave are such incomparable masterpieces as Vincent van Gogh's Mountains at Saint-Rémy (1889), Edouard Manet's Before the Mirror (1876), and close to 30 paintings and drawings by Pablo Picasso, including his seminal works La Moulin de la Galette (1900), and Woman Ironing (1904). This reinstallation of more than 30 works of the Thannhauser Collection offers visitors the opportunity to reacquaint themselves with some of the iconic images that comprise this celebrated collection.
Continuing the series of presentations drawn from the Guggenheim's extensive Kandinsky holdings, this exhibition features work from the earliest years of the artist's oeuvre, including paintings, prints, and two of his rarely shown paintings on glass. These early works, completed shortly after Kandinsky abandoned the legal profession to become the art director of the printing firm Kušverev in Moscow in 1895, explore the artist's associations with leading avant-garde groups after his arrival in Munich in 1896, including Phalanx, Neue Künstlervereinigung München (New Artist's Association of Munich), and Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider). The prints on view demonstrate Kandinsky's talent for working in the three classic graphic media--etching, woodcut, and lithography--and reveal his early development as an artist and theoretician. The exhibition illustrates how Kandinsky's early work was informed by recollections of his native Russia, such as the brightly-decorated furniture and votive pictures he had observed in the homes of the peasants, as well as by romantic historicism, lyric poetry, folklore and pure fantasy.
Culled from the museum's extensive early modernist collection of works on paper, this exhibition follows the course of the early twentieth-century avant-gardes spanning Cubism to Orphism, Expressionism, Der Blaue Reiter, Dada, and the Bauhaus, and culminating with Surrealism. The exhibition features particular proponents of each movement -- Albert Gleizes, Fernand Leger, Kurt Schwitters, Ernst Kirchner, Franz Marc, Robert Delaunay, Frantisek Kupka, László Moholy-Nagy and Joan Miró -- to reflect the in-depth holdings of the Guggenheim's collection of works from these eras.
Organized by The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in association with Tate Modern, London, and Centre Pompidou, Paris, this full-career retrospective of one of the most important artists of our time will fill the Guggenheim's entire Frank Lloyd Wright rotunda and an adjacent gallery, making it the most comprehensive examination to date of Bourgeois' long and distinguished career. Born in Paris in 1911, Bourgeois was one of the leading figures in 20th and 21st-century art who influenced multiple generations of artists with her unique and ever-evolving talent to wed form and narrative content. This ambitious retrospective will encompass over 150 of the artist's works and include early paintings, works on paper, and sculpture in media ranging from wood to bronze to latex to marble, as well as her signature Cells. Louise Bourgeois will encompass representative selections from all of the major phases of the artist's career. Visitors will be greeted in the museum's rotunda by one of Bourgeois' iconic spider sculptures, Spider Couple, 2003, and a pair of hanging aluminum works dating from 2004 that draw on another of her signature motifs, the spiral. Appropriately, this recurring form in the artist's iconography will find a corollary in the unique structure of the Guggenheim's spiraling ramps, on which the works will be arranged along predominantly chronological lines. Throughout the exhibition, the works on paper that are an integral and constant element of Bourgeois' creative process will be juxtaposed with her sculptural works. At the Guggenheim, the exhibition is organized by Nancy Spector , Chief Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum .
In conjunction with the retrospective on view from June 27 – September 28, the Guggenheim's Sackler Center for Arts Education will present A Life in Pictures: Louise Bourgeois, an exhibition of photographs and diaries from the artist's archives. For Louise Bourgeois, art and life are inextricably linked. Although her complex, allusive work attains a universal significance, she has spoken of the autobiographical subtext that underpins her unique symbolic language. This exhibition of photographs and ephemera illuminates the artist's personal history, from her childhood in prewar to present day New York. This presentation is organized by Nancy Spector, Chief Curator of the Guggenheim Museum .
In 2001 an important but irreparably damaged painting by Ad Reinhardt, Black Painting (1960-1966), was donated by AXA Art Insurance to the Guggenheim Museum as part of an unprecedented conservation research study and collaboration with The Museum of Modern Art. Over the next five years, conservators, scientists, curators, and artists who participated in the AXA Art Conservation Project carried out a complete physical examination and scientific analyses of the work which helped to create a dossier of information about Reinhardt's working methods and subsequent experimental restoration techniques used on the painting. The exhibition Imageless will present a small exhibition whereby the public will enter the world of the conservator as forensic scientist, working collaboratively with a group of experts, to uncover the mystery hidden beneath the monochromatic black painting. Through various analytical methods such as Fourier Transform Infrared Analysis (FTIR), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Raman Spectroscopy and Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS), the team was able to identify the chemical composition of the materials, and identify restoration layers and damages above the original painting. Through didactic materials, mock-ups, and presentation of sample materials, the public will learn the extent of such a comprehensive research project in the field of conservation. For comparative viewing and appreciation of the subtleties of surface, the exhibition will also include an adjacent room with several pristine Reinhardt paintings. This exhibition is organized by Carol Stringari, Chief Conservator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in collaboration with the Sackler Center for Arts Education.
Since the early 1990s, Catherine Opie (b. 1961) has produced a complex body of photographic work, adopting such diverse genres as studio portraiture, landscape photography, and urban street photography to explore notions of communal, sexual, and cultural identity. From her early portraits of queer subcultures to her expansive urban landscapes, Opie has offered profound insights into the conditions in which communities form and the terms by which they are defined. All the while she has maintained a strict formal rigor, working in stark and provocative color as well as richly toned black and white. Catherine Opie: American Photographer will gather together significant examples from several of Opie's most important series in a major mid-career survey. Though Opie's photographs have been shown extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan—including one-person exhibitions at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut; Artpace, San Antonio; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California; St. Louis Art Museum; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Photographers' Gallery, London—no single exhibition has yet offered an overview of her richly diverse artistic project. Catherine Opie: American Photographer will serve to fill this void. The exhibition is organized by Jennifer Blessing, Curator of Photography; with Nat Trotman, Assistant Curator.
Admission is $18 for adults, $15 for students and seniors (65+). Children under 12 are free. An audio guide is available and included with admission. The museum is open Saturday to Wednesday, 10 AM to 5:45 PM; Friday, 10 AM to 7:45 PM. The museum is closed on Thursday. On Friday evenings beginning at 5:45 PM, the museum hosts Pay What You Wish; these tickets cannot be purchased in advance. For general information, please call 212 423 3500 or visit www.guggenheim.org.