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Grey Art Museum

The Grey Art Museum, known until 2023 as the Grey Art Gallery, is New York University's fine art museum.[1] As a university art museum, the Grey Art Gallery functions to collect, preserve, study, document, interpret, and exhibit the evidence of human culture. While these goals are common to all museums, the Grey distinguishes itself by emphasizing art's historical, cultural, and social contexts, with experimentation and interpretation as integral parts of programmatic planning. Thus, in addition to being a place to view the objects of material culture, the Gallery serves as a museum-laboratory in which a broader view of an object's environment enriches our understanding of its contribution to civilization.

NYU's art collection was transformed into the Grey Art Gallery in 1973 following a major gift of one thousand works from Abby Weed Grey.[2] The museum opened to the public in 1975. The Abby Weed Grey Collection of Modern Asian and Middle Eastern Art at NYU comprises some 700 works produced by artists from countries as diverse as Japan, Thailand, India, Kashmir, Nepal, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, and Israel.[3]

The Grey Art Gallery also oversees the art collection of New York University. Founded in 1958 with the acquisition of Francis Picabia's Resonateur (1922) and Fritz Glarner's Relational Painting (1949–50), the NYU Art Collection comprises approximately 5,000 works, mainly dating from the 19th and 20th centuries, such as Pablo Picasso's Bust of Sylvette (1967), currently installed at University Village (Manhattan); Joseph Cornell's Chocolat Menier (1952); and works by Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, and Ilya Bolotowsky, as well as Romare Bearden, Arshile Gorky, Adolph Gottlieb, Kenneth Noland, Jane Freilicher, Ad Reinhardt, and Alex Katz, among many others.[4]

Location

Until 2023, the Gallery was housed in the Silver Center (formerly Main Building), on the site on NYU's original home, the legendary University Building (1835–94), where artists and writers, including Samuel Colt, Winslow Homer, George Inness, and Henry James, worked.[citation needed] It was also here that Professor Samuel F. B. Morse established the first academic art department in the U.S.[5]

Between 1927 and 1942, the space that became the Grey hosted Albert Eugene Gallatin Gallery (later Museum) of Living Art—the first American museum exclusively devoted to modernist art.[citation needed] In exhibiting work by Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, Joan Miró, Kazimir Malevich, Piet Mondrian, Jean Arp, and artists associated with the American Abstract Artists group, Gallatin created a forum for intellectual exchange and a place where visitors could view the latest developments in art.

In 2023, NYU announced that when it reopened in March 2024 following renovations and a closure for the COVID-19 pandemic, the museum would be known as the Grey Art Museum and would move to 18 Cooper Square where it would have larger galleries as well as a study center.[2]

History

NYU lacked a permanent museum until 1975, when a private donation gift from Abby Weed Grey enabled the historic venue's renovation and improvement of the historic venue, and the doors reopened as the Grey Art Gallery and Study Center in 1975.[5] Weed Grey collected some 700 works of modern art on her travels throughout Asia and the Middle East.[6][7][8]

In 1983, Grey Art Gallery was the first organization in the United States to show a major Frida Kahlo exhibit.[2]

Collections

Abby Weed Grey Collection of Modern Asian and Middle Eastern Art

The gallery was endowed by Abby Weed Grey, who also donated some 700 works of modern art that she acquired during her frequent travels in Asia and the Middle East. The Abby Weed Grey Collection constitutes the largest institutional holdings of modern Iranian and Turkish art outside those countries.[9] Grey was especially supportive of Iranian art, which comprises one-fifth of her collection at NYU. She also donated significant holdings of works by artists from Turkey and India. Many of the artists whose works she collected adapted their culture's indigenous aesthetic traditions to contemporary circumstances, and they often blend representation and abstraction.[10]

The New York University Art Collection

The New York University Art Collection, of which the Grey Art Gallery is now guardian,[2] was founded in 1958 with NYU's acquisition of Francis Picabia's Resonateur (c. 1922) and Fritz Glarner's Relational Painting (1949–50). Today the collection (which includes approximately 6,000 objects) is primarily composed of late-19th and 20th-century works, ranging from Pablo Picasso's monumental public sculpture Bust of Sylvette to a Joseph Cornell box, Chocolat Menier, from 1952. The collection's particular strength is American painting from the 1940s to the present. European prints are also well represented, with works by Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, and Picasso, to name a few.

Artists in the NYU Art Collection include: Milton Avery, Ilya Bolotowsky, Sonia Delaunay, Arshile Gorky, Édouard Manet, Francis Picabia, and many others. The collection is especially rich in works by artists working in New York in the 1950s and '60s, such as Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Adolph Gottlieb, Al Held, Romare Bearden, Ching Ho Cheng, Hans Hofmann, Alex Katz, Nicholas Krushenick, Yayoi Kusama, Agnes Martin, Robert Motherwell, Louise Nevelson, Kenneth Noland, Robert Rauschenberg, Ad Reinhardt, and Bernard (Tony) Rosenthal.[11]

Selected exhibitions

Barjeel's Taking Shape Exhibition at the Grey Art Gallery

This list comprises a selection of the exhibitions organized by the Grey Art Gallery at New York University from its opening in 1975 through today.[12]

Awards

Directors

References

  1. ^ "How Postwar Paris Changed the Expat Artists". The New York Times. 2024-04-26. Retrieved 2024-05-07. inaugurates the university's relocated and renamed art space; it has moved from Washington Square, where it was known as the Grey Art Gallery
  2. ^ a b c d Sheets, Hilarie M. (2023-09-14). "Home for N.Y.U.'s Art Treasures Gets a New Name and Space". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-12-14.
  3. ^ "Abby Weed Grey, Art Patron And Founder of Study Center". The New York Times. 1983-06-04. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-12-07.
  4. ^ "The New York University Art Collection". Grey Art Gallery, NYU. 2 December 2015. Retrieved May 27, 2020.
  5. ^ a b "Grey Art Gallery: History". Retrieved 2018-01-25.
  6. ^ Danilov, Victor J. (2005). Women And Museums: a comprehensive guide. AltaMira Press. p. 296. ISBN 9780759108554.
  7. ^ Gumpert, Lynn; et al. (2016). Global/Local 1960–2015: Six Artists from Iran. Grey Art Gallery, NYU.
  8. ^ Hapgood, Susan; et al. (1970). Abby Grey and Indian Modernism: Selections from the NYU Art Collection. Grey Art Gallery, NYU.
  9. ^ "The Abby Weed Grey Collection of Modern Asian and Middle Eastern Art". Grey Art Gallery, NYU. 9 May 2016. Retrieved May 27, 2020.
  10. ^ "The Abby Weed Grey Collection of Modern Asian and Middle Eastern Art". 9 May 2016. Retrieved 2018-01-25.
  11. ^ "New York Cool". Grey Art Gallery, NYU. 2 December 2015. Retrieved May 27, 2020.
  12. ^ "Exhibition History". Grey Art Gallery. Retrieved February 13, 2024.
  13. ^ "Exhibition History". Grey Art Gallery, NYU. Retrieved May 27, 2020.
  14. ^ "The 2017 Alice Award Short List". Retrieved 2020-03-24.
  15. ^ Brenson, Michael (1983-11-25). "Art People". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-12-07.
  16. ^ Greenberger, Alex (2020-05-07). "Thomas Sokolowski, Open-Minded Museum Leader with an Activist Spirit, Is Dead at 70". ARTnews.com. Retrieved 2022-12-07.
  17. ^ Greenberger, Alex (2022-07-15). "How an Under-Recognized Female Dealer Shaped the 20th-Century French Art Scene". ARTnews.com. Retrieved 2022-12-07.

External links

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