Guggenheim Museum Announces Holiday Hours

Benefit Events on November 13 and 14 Celebrated the Guggenheim Museum’s 60th Anniversary with Performances by Christine and the Queens and Kelsey Lu

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum will offer special holiday hours, 10 am–8 pm, from Thursday, December 26, through Tuesday, December 31. During this time, the museum is extending its regular evening hours to 8 pm for an additional opportunity to view two major exhibitions in their final weeks: Implicit Tensions: Mapplethorpe Now, closing January 5; and Artistic License: Six Takes on the Guggenheim Collection, closing January 12.

1071 Fifth Avenue; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, New York; Architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Photo: David Heald © The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York

On Christmas Eve, Tuesday, December 24, museum hours will be 10 am–4 pm. The museum will be closed Christmas Day, Wednesday, December 25, and open New Year’s Day, Wednesday, January 1, from 10 am to 6 pm. The Guggenheim Store will be open for an additional half hour before and after museum hours.

Other exhibitions on view include the Guggenheim Collection galleries, showcasing the museum’s rich holdings of early modernism with works by such artists as Constantin Brancusi, Marc Chagall, Vasily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, Joan Miró, and Piet Mondrian; and the Thannhauser Collection, a selection of paintings, works on paper, and sculptures that represent the earliest objects in the Guggenheim’s collection. Further information is available at guggenheim.org/exhibitions.

For tickets and general information, please visit guggenheim.org.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Appoints Ashley James Associate Curator, Contemporary Art

(NEW YORK, NY—November 14, 2019)—The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum announces the appointment of Ashley James as Associate Curator, Contemporary Art. James, whose work merges curatorial practice with an academic background rooted in African American studies, English literature, and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, began her new position on November 12.

Ashley James, the newly-appointed Associate Curator, Contemporary Art at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. (Image provided by The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum)

Nancy Spector, Artistic Director and Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator, said, “Ashley is a curator who has demonstrated incisive and intersectional thinking about contemporary artistic practice. Her work complements the Guggenheim’s mission to present the art of today, which we understand as a deep and expansive view of art history. We are pleased to welcome her to the Guggenheim and anticipate a strong collaboration with Ashley as part of our excellent and dedicated curatorial team.”

James said, “It is an honor to be joining the Guggenheim, an institution that advances art and culture through rigor and creativity, distinct vision, and a clear commitment to artists. I am eager to begin work with my colleagues to develop new research, explore new ideas for exhibitions, programs, and publications, and continue to expand and shape such a vital collection.”

Most recently James served as Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum, where she was the lead curator for the museum’s presentation of Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, and organized Eric N. Mack: Lemme walk across the room, and is cocurating the forthcoming John Edmonds: A Sidelong Glance. She played a key role in development, public programs, and acquisitions at the Brooklyn Museum, including helping to bring works by Ed Clark, Arthur Jafa, Taryn Simon, and other key contemporary artists into the collection. James also served as a Mellon Curatorial Fellow in Drawing and Prints at the Museum of Modern Art, where her work focused on two groundbreaking retrospectives, of Adrian Piper and Charles White, and has held positions at the Studio Museum in Harlem and at the Yale University Art Gallery, where she co-organized the exhibition Odd Volumes: Book Art from the Allan Chasanoff Collection. She has contributed essays and research for books, magazines, and catalogues, including publications on Charles White, Palmer Hayden, and Howardena Pindell. She has participated in panel discussions and lectures at museums and arts organizations across the United States, and was most recently in conversation with Amy Sherald at an event hosted by ArtTable. James holds a BA from Columbia University and an MA from Yale University, where, in the spring of 2020, she will receive a PhD in English Literature, African American Studies, and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, with a dissertation that reorients discourses of black representation.

Artsy and UBS Release Multimedia Feature “The Year in Art”

Report Engages Audience with 2016’S Art Trends, People, News, and Events

Artsy, in collaboration with, today launched an immersive experience that will guide users through the most important art and culture moments, influential artists and curators, and most impactful exhibitions of 2016. Presented as an easily digestible, accessible look at the past year in art, the feature takes a broader look at the art world, connecting important moments in that sphere to current events in the world at large. This is the fourth iteration of Artsy and UBS’s ongoing partnership, following their collaboration on The Art Market (in Four Parts), a four part series exploring the contemporary art market.

Earlier iterations of Artsy and UBS’s continuing collaboration include a series of short films about the 56th International Art Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia, The Year in Art 2015, and the previously-mentioned The Art Market (in Four Parts).

The Year in Art feature is informed by data gleaned from UBS’s Planet Art mobile app (an aggregator of contemporary art news) and Artsy’s proprietary data, as well as input from Artsy’s close collaborators—artists, curators, collectors, critics, and others—which was then interpreted and filtered through Artsy’s editorial team. The feature highlights particularly impactful “moments” in the global art calendar from the past year, including Brexit (exploring a possible cooling of the art market); the re-emergence of Dread Scott’s flag (and its adoption by the Black Lives Matter movement); and the release of the Oculus Rift headset (focusing on the proliferation of virtual reality in society at large), amongst others. Articles announcing The Most Influential Living Artists of 2016, Most Influential Curators of 2016, Top Emerging Artists of 2016, and Artists to Watch in 2017 round out the feature, providing a robust snapshot of the past year, and a reference for years to come.

Artsy is the leading resource for learning about and collecting art from over 4,000 leading galleries, 700 museums and institutions, 60 international art fairs, and select auctions. Artsy provides free access via its website (Artsy.net) and iPhone and iPad apps to 500,000 images of art and architecture by 50,000 artists, which includes the world’s largest online database of contemporary art. Artsy’s encyclopedic database spans historical works, such as the Rosetta Stone and the Colosseum, to modern and contemporary works by artists such as Pablo Picasso, Willem de Kooning, Richard Serra, Sarah Lucas, and Cindy Sherman. Powered by The Art Genome Project, a classification system that maps the connections between artists and artworks, Artsy fosters new generations of art lovers, museum-goers, patrons, and collectors.

“This is the latest initiative in our overarching mission to drive the conversation around art forward in a thoughtful and accessible way,” notes Marina Cashdan, Artsy’s editorial director. “As interest and engagement with visual culture grows, globally rich features such as this are important references and touchstones to understanding society’s relationship to the most influential art and artists of today. Partnering with UBS on our fourth project together, and having access to Planet Art’s detailed analytics, was integral to realizing this comprehensive feature.”

UBS’s long and substantial record of patronage in contemporary art enables clients and audiences to participate in the international conversation about art and the global art world through the firm’s global art platform. In addition to the UBS Art Collection, considered one of the world’s largest and most important corporate collections of contemporary art, UBS has an extensive roster of contemporary art programs that include the firm’s long-term support for the premier international Art Basel shows in Basel, Miami Beach and Hong Kong, for which UBS serves as global Lead Partner; the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; and a global exhibition tour of WOMEN: New Portraits, an exhibition of newly commissioned photographs by renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz.

UBS celebrates Art Basel Miami Beach 2016

First Major Publication About UBS’s Renowned Art Collection In Nearly A Decade – UBS Art Collection: To Art Its Freedom, Published By Hatje Cantz – Debuts At Art Basel In Miami Beach

Accompanying Display In UBS Lounge Will Showcase Seminal Works Featured In The New Ubs Publication Including Those By Artists Cy Twombly, Alex Katz, Ed Ruscha, Tracey Emin, Sarah Morris And Doug Aitken

UBS will celebrate the opening of Art Basel Miami Beach 2016 by releasing its first major print publication on the UBS Art Collection in nearly a decade. UBS Art Collection: To Art its Freedom is a 274-page, deluxe hardback overview of the UBS Art Collection that includes a text on the history of the collection written by Mary Rozell, Global Head UBS Art Collection, as well as an essay by noted scholar Dieter Buchhart. The volume features more than 200 color illustrations of works by acknowledged masters such as Cy Twombly, Alighiero Boetti, Mary Heilmann, Ed Ruscha and Christopher Wool alongside a number of the collection’s recent acquisitions and works by emerging artists.

© 2016, ProLitteris, Zurich Alex Katz, Good Morning I, 1974 (Photo: Business Wire)

This publication, which will be launched at Art Basel Miami Beach 2016, provides the inspiration for the selection of artworks on view within the UBS lounge. UBS Art Collection: To Art its Freedom will feature more than 200 color illustrations and includes the text: “UBS Art Collection: A History and a Moment” written by Mary Rozell, Global Head UBS Art Collection, which presents a history of the Collection, as well as a view to its future. The central essay by noted art historian and curator Dieter Buchhart entitled “To Art its Freedom: A Collection as Emblem of Post-postmodern Polyphony” which contextualizes the Collection within the framework of art history and makes connections among the various featured works. The title of the publication is a quotation from the famous words above the entrance to the Secession Building in Vienna, “To Every Age its Art, to Art its Freedom,” which, according to Buchhart, reflects the spirit of the UBS Art Collection – one that endures and remains relevant, independent of changing circumstances or frameworks.

UBS And Contemporary Art

UBS’s long and substantial record of patronage in contemporary art enables clients and audiences to participate in the international conversation about art and the global art world through the firm’s global art platform. In addition to the UBS Art Collection, considered one of the world’s largest and most important corporate collections of contemporary art, UBS has an extensive roster of contemporary art programs that include the firm’s long-term support for the premier international Art Basel shows in Basel, Miami Beach and Hong Kong, for which UBS serves as global Lead Partner; the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; and a global exhibition tour of WOMEN: New Portraits, an exhibition of newly commissioned photographs by renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz. These activities are complemented by a number of regional partnerships with fine art institutions including the Fondation Beyeler in Switzerland, Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Milan, the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg and the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. UBS also provides its clients with insight into the contemporary art world through the free art news app UBS Planet Art, collaborations with the Swiss Institute, and the online resource Artsy, as well as through the UBS Arts Forum. (For more information about UBS’s commitment to contemporary art, visit www.ubs.com/art.)

Today the UBS Art Collection is considered one of the largest and most important corporate collections of contemporary art in the world. Comprised of various individual art collections with unique attributes that have been integrated over time through a series of mergers and acquisitions – notably between Union Bank of Switzerland, Swiss Bank Corporation and PaineWebber Inc. – the UBS Art Collection currently includes more than 30,000 paintings, works on paper, photography, sculpture, video and installations by artists from 73 countries. The vast majority of these works are displayed in more than 800 UBS offices around the world, serving as an inspiration for employees and a platform for dialogue with clients and the public.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Announces Short List for the Hugo Boss Prize 2016

Finalists for Milestone Twentieth Anniversary Are Tania Bruguera, Mark Leckey, Ralph Lemon, Laura Owens, Wael Shawky, and Anicka Yi

Six finalists have been selected for the Hugo Boss Prize 2016, the biennial award established in 1996 to recognize artists whose work is among the most innovative and influential of our time. Nancy Spector, Deputy Director and Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, and chair of the jury, announced the finalists chosen by a panel of international critics and curators. Over the past two decades juries have identified and selected as finalists paradigm-shifting artists from around the world, recognizing the achievements of both emerging and established figures, and setting no parameters in terms of age, gender, or medium.

Since its inception in 1996, the Hugo Boss Prize has been awarded to ten innovative and influential contemporary artists: American artist Matthew Barney (1996); Scottish artist Douglas Gordon (1998); Slovenian artist Marjetica Potrč (2000); French artist Pierre Huyghe (2002); Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija (2004); British artist Tacita Dean (2006); Palestinian artist Emily Jacir (2008); German artist Hans-Peter Feldmann (2010); Danish artist Danh Vo (2012); and American artist Paul Chan (2014). The related exhibitions have constituted some of the most compelling presentations in the museum’s history.

The following artists are finalists for the Hugo Boss Prize 2016:

• Tania Bruguera (b. 1968, Havana)
• Mark Leckey (b. 1964, Birkenhead, UK)
• Ralph Lemon (b. 1952, Cincinnati)
• Laura Owens (b. 1970, Euclid, Ohio)
• Wael Shawky (b. 1971, Alexandria, Egypt)
• Anicka Yi (b. 1971, Seoul)

“Promoting the most innovative cultural production continues to be at the core of the Guggenheim’s institutional mission, and for the past twenty years, the Hugo Boss Prize has given us the opportunity to identify and honor artists who make a lasting impact on the landscape of contemporary art,” said Spector. “We are grateful for the sustained enthusiasm of Hugo Boss for a project that acknowledges today’s most prescient creative voices.”

The prize, administered by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, has become an integral part of the Guggenheim’s contemporary art programming. The winner is awarded a $100,000 cash prize and featured in a solo exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. The Hugo Boss Prize catalogues, which have evolved over the years into ambitious collaborations between curators, artists, and designers, form a key component of the program’s legacy. The Hugo Boss Prize 2016 winner will be announced in the fall of 2016, and the exhibition will be held in 2017.

“The Hugo Boss Prize has developed into a renowned accolade over the past two decades, and we are proud to celebrate its 20th anniversary next year. Together with the Guggenheim Foundation, we have since honored many excellent and successful artists,” said Claus-Dietrich Lahrs, Chairman and CEO, HUGO BOSS AG. “Our sincerest congratulations go out to our nominees for 2016.”

The Hugo Boss Prize 2016 Short List

Tania Bruguera, Tatlin’s Whisper #5, 2008
Mounted police, crowd control techniques, audience, overall dimensions variable
Installation view: UBS Openings: Live the Living Currency, Tate Modern, London, 2008
Photo: Sheila Burnet. Courtesy the artist

Tania Bruguera (b. 1968, Havana) lives and works in various cities depending on the location of her long-term projects. In her politically driven, performance-based social practice, Bruguera activates communities through participatory projects that she categorizes as arte útil (useful art). Bruguera’s activism calls attention to injustice and advocates social change, as in Immigrant Movement International, which operates as a community center representing the interests of immigrant populations in Queens, New York.

Solo exhibitions of Bruguera’s work have been presented at the Malmö Konsthall, Sweden (2015); Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands (2013); Queens Museum of Art, New York (2013); Tate Modern, London (2012); Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2010); Beirut Art Center (2007); Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2006); Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana (2004); San Francisco Art Institute (2002); and Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo Lam, Havana (1996), among other venues.

Bruguera’s art has been included in group exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale (2015); Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2014); Revolution Not Televised, Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York (2012); Riwaq Biennial, Ramallah, Palestine (2009); Gwangju Biennial, South Korea (2008); Moscow Biennial of Contemporary Art (2007); Istanbul Biennial (2003); Documenta, Kassel, Germany (2002); SITE Santa Fe Biennial (1999); Johannesburg Biennial (1997); São Paulo Biennial (1996); New Art from Cuba, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (1995); and Havana Biennial (1994).

Mark Leckey, GreenScreenRefrigeratorAction, 2010. Installation view: Gavin Brown’s enterprise, 2010
Samsung refrigerator, rear screen projection rig, digital video, green screen set, PA, can of coolant. Courtesy the artist and Gavin Brown’s enterprise

Mark Leckey (b. 1964, Birkenhead, UK) lives and works in London. Leckey’s fluid practice ranges across video, sculpture, music, performance, installations, and the exhibition format. His work unravels the entwined forces of desire, imagination, and cultural allegiance that shape our everyday experience, absorbing both rarified and lowbrow references into a unique artistic vocabulary.

Leckey’s work has been presented in solo exhibitions at Secession, Vienna (2015); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2015); Kunsthalle Basel (2015); WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels (2014); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2013); Serpentine Gallery, London (2011); Institute of Contemporary Art, London (2009); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2008); Tate Britain, London (2003); and Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich (2003).

Leckey’s work has also been included in group exhibitions such as Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2013); Venice Biennale (2013); Ghosts in the Machine, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2012); Push and Pull, Tate Modern, London (2011); Gwangju Biennial, South Korea (2010); Pictures in Motion: Artists & Video/Film, Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2010); Turner Prize, Tate Britain, London (2008); Yokohama Triennial (2008); Tate Triennial, Tate Britain, London (2006); Istanbul Biennial (2005); Manifesta, San Sebastián, Spain (2004); and Protest & Survive, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2000).

Ralph Lemon, Untitled, 2010. Archival pigment print, 40 x 40 inches. Courtesy the artist

Ralph Lemon (b. 1952, Cincinnati) lives and works in New York. Lemon is a choreographer, writer, director, and visual artist whose interdisciplinary performance projects draw on political histories and personal relationships to illuminate the complexity and raw beauty of the human experience. Lemon combines dance, film, text, music, and sculptural installation in evocative programs that explore themes of identity, loss, and the body.

Lemon is Artistic Director of Cross Performance. His most recent projects include Scaffold Room (2015); Four Walls (2012); and How Can You Stay in The House All Day and Not Go Anywhere? (2008–10), a work that features live performance, film, and visual art and toured the United States. Lemon has curated the performance series Some sweet day at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2012) and I Get Lost at Danspace Project, New York (2010).

His solo visual art exhibitions include 1856 Cessna Road, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2012); How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere?, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2010); (the efflorescence of) Walter, Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans (2008), The Kitchen, New York (2007), and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2006); and The Geography Trilogy, Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut (2001). Group exhibitions featuring Lemon’s work include Move: Choreographing You, Hayward Gallery, London (2010) and The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl, Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina (2010).

Laura Owens, Untitled, 2014. Oil, Flashe, and silkscreen ink on linen, 137.5 x 120 inches. Courtesy the artist / Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York / Sadie Coles HQ, London / Capitain Petzel, Berlin / Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne

Laura Owens (b. 1970, Euclid, Ohio) lives and works in Los Angeles. For the past two decades, Owens’s influential work has questioned the parameters and possibilities for making and viewing a painting today. She has continually shifted the terms of her practice, incorporating figuration, abstraction, digital techniques, and gestural mark making into multivalent compositions that confound expectations of pictorial space.

Owens’s work has been presented in solo exhibitions at Secession, Vienna (2015); Kunstmuseum Bonn (2011); Kunsthalle Zürich (2006); Camden Arts Centre, London (2006); Milwaukee Art Museum (2003); Aspen Art Museum, Colorado (2003); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2003); and Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (2001), among other venues.

Owens’s art has also been featured in group exhibitions such as The Forever Now, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2014); Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2014); The Spectacular of Vernacular, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2011); Undiscovered Country, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2004); Whitney Biennial (2004); Public Offerings, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2001); Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh (1999); and Vertical Painting Show, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center (1997). She is the founder of 356 S. Mission Rd., a contemporary art exhibition space in downtown Los Angeles.

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Presents Major Alberto Burri Retrospective, Alberto Burri: The Trauma Of Painting

First Exhibition in the United States in Over 35 Years Devoted to the Italian Artist

Alberto Burri in his studio in Case Nove di Morra, Città di Castello, Italy, 1982. Photo: Aurelio Amendola © Aurelio Amendola, Pistoia, Italy

From October 9, 2015, to January 6, 2016, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum ( 1071 Fifth Avenue, New York) will present a major retrospective—Alberto Burri: The Trauma Of Painting–the first in the United States in more than thirty-five years and the most comprehensive in this country—devoted to the work of Italian artist Alberto Burri (1915–1995). Exploring the beauty and complexity of Burri’s process-based works, the exhibition positions the artist as a central protagonist of post–World War II art and revises traditional narratives of the cultural exchanges between the United States and Europe in the 1950s and ’60s.

Rosso plastica (Red Plastic), 1961. Plastic (PVC), acrylic, and combustion on plastic (PE) and black fabric, 142 x 153 cm. Modern Art Foundation. © Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, Città di Castello/2015 Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome. Photo: Massimo Napoli, Rome, courtesy Modern Art Foundation

Burri broke with the gestural, painted surfaces of both American Abstract Expressionism and European Art Informel by manipulating unorthodox pigments and humble, prefabricated materials. A key figure in the transition from collage to assemblage, Burri barely used paint or brush, and instead worked his surfaces with stitching and combustion, among other signal processes. With his torn and mended burlap sacks, “hunchback” canvases, and melted industrial plastics, Burri often made allusions to skin and wounds, but in a purely abstract idiom. The tactile quality of his work anticipated Post-Minimalist and feminist art of the 1960s, while his red, black, and white “material monochromes” defied notions of purity and reductive form associated with American formalist modernism. Bringing together more than one hundred works, including many that have never before been seen outside of Italy, the exhibition demonstrates how Burri blurred the line between painting and sculptural relief and created a new kind of picture-object that directly influenced Neo-Dada, Process art, and Arte Povera.

Grande cretto nero (Large Black Cretto), 1977. Acrylic and PVA on Celotex, 149.5 x 249.5 cm. Centre Pompidou, Paris, Musée national d’art moderne/Centre de création industrielle, Gift of the artist, 1978
© Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, Città di Castello/2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome. Photo: © CNAC/MNAM/Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, New York

Francesca Lavazza said: “Alberto Burri’s birth date of 1915 represents a major moment in Italian history, marking the nation’s entrance into World War I, but also the establishment of Lavazza’s longstanding headquarters in Turin. This year, Lavazza is proud to celebrate its own 120th birthday with support for this sweeping exhibition of one of the pioneers of modernism, and by joining the Guggenheim in showing Burri and his enduring influence upon the art world on both sides of the Atlantic.”

Grande ferro M 4 (Large Iron M 4), 1959. Welded iron sheet metal and tacks on wood framework, 199.8 x 189.9 cm. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 60.1572. © Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, Città di Castello/2015 Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome. Photo: Kristopher McKay © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York

Burri is best known for his series of Sacchi (sacks) made of stitched and patched remnants of torn burlap bags, in some cases combined with fragments of discarded clothing. Far less familiar to American audiences are the artist’s other series, which this exhibition represents in depth: Catrami (tars), Muffe (molds), Gobbi (hunchbacks, or canvases with protrusions), Bianchi (white monochromes), Legni (wood combustions), Ferri (irons, or protruding wall reliefs made from prefabricated cold-rolled steel), Combustioni plastiche (plastic combustions, or melted plastic sheeting), Cretti (induced craquelure, or cracking), and Cellotex works (flayed and peeled fiberboard).

Nero bianco e sacco (Black White and Sack), ca. 1954. Oil, fabric, burlap, pumice, and PVA on canvas, 125 x 107 cm. Courtesy Galleria Tega, Milan. © Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, Città di Castello/2015 Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome. Photo: Paolo Vandrasch and Romina Bettega

The exhibition unfolds on the ramps of the Guggenheim both chronologically and organized by series, following the artist’s movement from one set of materials, processes, and colors to the next. Throughout his career, Burri also engaged with the history of painting, reflecting his deep familiarity with the Renaissance art of his native Umbria. The exhibition also reveals the dialogue with American Minimalism that informed Burri’s later Cretti and Cellotex works and features a new film on his enormous Grande cretto (Large Cretto, 1985–89), a Land art memorial to the victims of a 1968 earthquake in Gibellina, Sicily.

Born in Città di Castello, Italy, in 1915, Burri trained to be a doctor and served as a medic in the Italian army in North Africa during World War II. Following his unit’s capture in Tunisia in 1943, he was interned at a prisoner-of-war camp in Hereford, Texas, where he began painting. After his return to Italy in 1946, Burri devoted himself to art—a decision prompted by his firsthand experiences of war, deprivation, and Italy’s calamitous defeat. His first solo show, at Rome’s Galleria La Margherita in 1947, featured landscapes and still lifes. After a trip to Paris in 1948–49, he began to experiment with tarry substances, ground pumice, industrial enamel paints, and metal armatures and formed accretions and gashes that destroy the integrity of the picture plane. He then traumatized the very structure of painting by puncturing, exposing, and reconstituting the support. Instead of using the traditional cohesive piece of stretched canvas, Burri assembled his works from piecemeal rags, broken wood veneer, welded steel sheets, or layers of melted plastic—stitching, riveting, soldering, stapling, gluing, and burning his materials along the way. His work demolished and reconfigured the Western pictorial tradition, while transforming the scale and affective power of modernist collage.

Rosso gobbo (Red Hunchback), 1953. Acrylic, fabric, and resin on canvas; metal rod on verso, 56.5 x 85 cm
Private collection, Rome. © Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, Città di Castello/2015. Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome

Though considered an Italian artist, Burri married an American dancer, Minsa Craig, and, beginning in 1963, resided annually in Los Angeles during the winter months. In 1978 the artist established the Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri in Città di Castello. The Fondazione Burri today operates two museums in his hometown that present artwork he personally installed, the Palazzo Albizzini and the Ex Seccatoi del Tabacco. The Fondazione is lending two pictures pulled directly from its permanent collection exhibition: Grande bianco (Large White, 1952) and Grande bianco (Large White, 1956). The former is one of three large textile collages that Robert Rauschenberg saw in Burri’s Rome studio in early 1953. Those three grand works will be reunited in the exhibition.

Installation View: Inaugural Selection, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, October 21, 1959–June 19, 1960. Third from left: Alberto Burri’s Legno e bianco 1 (Wood and White 1, 1956). Photo: © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York

Legno e bianco I (Wood and White I), 1956. Wood veneer, combustion, acrylic, and Vinavil on canvas, 87.7 x 159 cm. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 57.1463. © Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, Città di Castello/2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome

Lo strappo (The Rip), 1952. Oil, fabric, thread, pumice, and Vinavil, 87 x 58 cm. Collezione Beatrice Monti della Corte. © Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, Città di Castello/2015 Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome. Photo: © Christie’s Image Ltd

In conjunction with the exhibition, the Guggenheim Museum led an in-depth conservation study of the artworks assembled for the retrospective as well as numerous other works from the various series. The study, which involved the efforts of a multidisciplinary team of curators, conservation scientists, and painting, paper, objects, and textile conservators, analyzed the wide variety of original and complex materials and working methods Burri used.

Guggenheim and Dior Sets Dates for the 2015 Guggenheim International Gala

Guggenheim Museum and Dior Announce Dates for the 2015 Guggenheim International Gala with Performance by Grimes

Benefit Events on November 4 and 5 Honor Artists On Kawara (in memoriam), Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, and Doris Salcedo

The 2015 Guggenheim International Gala (GIG) will take place on November 4 and 5, 2015, and for the third consecutive year will be presented by Dior. The celebration will begin on Wednesday with a pre-party hosted by the Guggenheim’s Young Collectors Council (YCC) featuring a special musical performance by Canadian producer, singer, and songwriter Grimes. The pre-party will be held from 9 pm to midnight. A benefit dinner on Thursday will follow, honoring artists On Kawara (in memoriam) and Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, both the subjects of recent career-spanning exhibitions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and Colombian artist Doris Salcedo, whose work is on view at the museum through October 12, 2015.

Portrait of Doris Salcedo. Photo: David Heald © The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

Proceeds from the GIG contribute to the Guggenheim Museum’s general operating fund, which helps to make possible a range of internationally acclaimed exhibitions and educational programs, supports stewardship of the Guggenheim’s unparalleled collections of modern and contemporary works of art, and provides for the care of the museum’s landmark building.

Portrait of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian. Photo: David Heald © The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

Honorary chairs for the event are Christina Baker, Phyllis Mack, Raf Simons, Jennifer Blei Stockman, and Sidney Toledano. Event cochairs are Todd and Katie Boehly, Valentino D. Carlotti, and Denise Saul.

Richard Armstrong, Director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and Museum said, “The Guggenheim is pleased to honor three extraordinary artists, On Kawara, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, and Doris Salcedo, whose work we have been privileged to share with museum-going audiences this year and which holds an important place in our collection. We are delighted to be working again with Dior, our invaluable collaborator in presenting the GIG, and we look forward to building on last year’s success.”

Installation view: Doris Salcedo, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, June 26–October 12, 2015
(Photo: David Heald © The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation)

Installation view: On Kawara—Silence, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, February 6–May 3, 2015. Photo: David Heald © The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

Tickets to the GIG Pre-Party on November 4 include the performance, a full open bar, and an opportunity to view a portion of the exhibition Alberto Burri: The Trauma of Painting. Tickets are $300 for YCC members and $350 general admission. A one-year membership to the YCC may be combined with an individual ticket to the pre-party for the discounted price of $750. The event has a limited capacity.

Current YCC members receive priority access to purchase discounted tickets. General admission tickets will be available beginning August 6 at 12 pm. For tickets and more information, visit guggenheim.org/gigpreparty. For further information on tickets to the GIG dinner on November 5, contact specialevents@guggenheim.org.

Grimes (Photo: John Londono)

Grimes is the multimedia project of Canadian artist Claire Boucher. Best known as a producer, singer and songwriter, “Grimes” also encompasses Boucher’s work as a director, painter and writer. In 2013 Grimes received a Webby Award for Artist of the Year and a Juno Award for Electronic Album of the Year for her third record, Visions. Other albums include Halfaxa and Geidi Primes (both 2010). Grimes will release her highly anticipated fourth album this fall.

guggenheim.org.

Opening Soon: Guggenheim Examines New Developments in Contemporary Photography in Photo-Poetics: An Anthology

Venue: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue, New York

Location: Tower Levels 2, 4, and 5

Dates: November 20, 2015–March 23, 2016

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presents Photo-Poetics: An Anthology, an exhibition documenting recent developments in contemporary photography and consisting of photographs, videos, and slide installations by ten international artists. With more than 70 works by Claudia Angelmaier, Erica Baum, Anne Collier, Moyra Davey, Leslie Hewitt, Elad Lassry, Lisa Oppenheim, Erin Shirreff, Kathrin Sonntag, and Sara VanDerBeek, the exhibition runs from November 20, 2015–March 23, 2016, and presents a focused study into the nature, traditions, and magic of photography in the context of the rapid digital transformation of the medium.

Lisa Oppenheim, The Sun is Always Setting Somewhere Else, 2006, Slide projection of 15 35 mm slides, continuous loop, dimensions variable, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Purchased with funds contributed by the Photography Committee, 2009. 2009.60

Moyra Davey, Les Goddesses, 2011, HD color video, with sound, 61 min., Courtesy the artist and Murray Guy, New York. © Moyra Davey

Organized by Jennifer Blessing, Senior Curator, Photography, with Susan Thompson, Assistant Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Photo-Poetics: An Anthology offers an opportunity to define the concerns of a new generation of photographic artists and contextualize their work within the history of art and visual culture. These artists mainly pursue a studio-based approach to still-life photography that centers on the representation of objects, often printed matter such as books, magazines, and record covers. The result is often an image imbued with poetic and evocative personal significance that resonates with larger cultural and historical meanings.

Anne Collier, Crying, 2005, Chromogenic print, 99.1 x 134 cm, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Purchased with funds contributed by Mr. and Mrs. Aaron M. Tighe 2005.47 © Anne Collier

Erin Shirreff, UN 2010, 2010, HD color video, silent 17 min., Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Purchased with funds contributed by Erica Gervais, 2010.29 © 2010 Erin Shirreff

The artists in the exhibition attempt to rematerialize the photograph through meticulous printing, using film and other disappearing photo technologies. Drawing on the legacies of Conceptualism and invested in exploring the processes and techniques of photography, they are also deeply interested in how photographic images circulate. Theirs is a sort of “photo poetics,” an art that self-consciously investigates the laws of photography and the nature of photographic representation, reproduction, and the photographic object. The works in the exhibition, rich with detail, reward close and prolonged regard; they ask for a mode of looking that is closer to reading than the cursory scanning fostered by the clicking and swiping functionalities of smartphones and social media. Both the exhibition and its accompanying catalogue are conceived as anthologies, as independent vehicles to introduce each artist’s important and unique practice.

Erica Baum, Jaws, 2008 (from the series Naked Eye), Inkjet print, 47 x 41.6 cm, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Purchased with funds contributed by Mr. and Mrs. Aaron M. Tighe, 2011
2011.48 © Erica Baum

Photo-Poetics: An Anthology is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue featuring an introduction, afterword, and ten monographic essays by Jennifer Blessing that provide focused, contemplative readings of each artist’s work. The catalogue’s design, in which each artist’s practice is presented individually, reflects the exhibition’s structure as a series of solo presentations. The catalogue will be available for $50 at the Guggenheim Store and online at guggenheimstore.org.

Leslie Hewitt, Riffs on Real Time (3 of 10), 2006–09, Chromogenic print, 76.2 x 61 cm, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Purchased with funds contributed by the Photography Committee, 2010. 2010.55

Elad Lassry, Untitled (Woman, Blond), 2013, Chromogenic print in walnut frame with four-ply silk, 36.8 x 29.2 x 3.8 cm, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Purchased with funds contributed by the Photography Committee, 2013.72 © Elad Lassry

Georg Baselitz: Drinkers and Orange Eaters at Skarstedt Upper East Side

Skarstedt UES will present a comprehensive exhibition of work by renowned German artist Georg Baselitz at their 79th Street gallery, which will feature 12 paintings from both his Drinkers and Orange Eaters series’, dating from 1981-82. The exhibition brings together paintings from public and private collections to demonstrate the breadth of Baselitz’s creativity during this two-year period. The Drinkers and Orange Eaters remain some of Baselitz’s most expressive and vividly colorful works.

Georg Baselitz Flaschentrinker (Bottle Drinker), 1981 charcoal on paper 24 x 17 inches (61 x 43.2 cm.)

Georg Baselitz Ohne Titel (Mann im Mond-Franz Pforr-Remix) (11.III.06), Unititled (Man in the Moon-Franz Pforr), 2006 feather pen and indian ink on paper 29 x 19 5/8 inches (73.7 x 49.8 cm.)

Georg Baselitz Untitled (The Last Self-Portrait I) , 1982 charcoal and pastel on paper 24 x 17 inches (61 x 43.2 cm.)

Georg Baselitz Doktor Brot, 1988 oil on canvas 98.4 x 98.4 inches (249.9 x 249.9 cm.)

Georg Baselitz, Orangenesser, 1982, oil on canvas
57 1/2 x 44 4/5 inches (146 x 114 cm.)

Georg Baselitz was born in Deutschbaselitz, Germany, in 1938. He attended the Hochschule für bildende und angewandte Kunste in East Berlin in 1956 and the West Berlin school from 1957 – 1963. In 1965, he was awarded a scholarship for a year’s residential study at the Villa Romana in Florence. Very early in his career, Baselitz emerged as a pioneer of German Neo-Expressionism, rebelling against the dominance of abstract painting, proposing in its place a very personal, expressive figurative art rooted in the art brut movement. In his early works, he concentrated on several figure types, including heroes, rebels, and shepherds. From 1969 on, Baselitz painted his subjects upside-down. He adopted this method to stress the artifice of painting. The artist is also well known for his sculpture and printmaking. Drawing upon a varied collection of influences outside of mainstream Modernism, including art of the Mannerist period, African sculptures, imagery rooted in the Art Brut, as well as the Existentialist art and literature of Dada and Surrealism, Baselitz developed a distinct artistic language.

 

At the time these works were painted, Baselitz found himself surrounded by the new images of a younger artistic generation taking up German Expressionism as a spontaneous experience, practiced using clowns and checked patterns. Baselitz’s use of vibrant reds and yellows—even a harlequin motif—lends a theatrical quality to his work, while the depiction of glassware and fruit adds a playful element of celebration and bacchanalia.

Georg Baselitz, Ohne Titel (B. fur Larry-Remix) (26.VII.06), Untitled (B. for Larry-Remix), 2006
feather pen and watercolor on paper
22 3/8 x 15 1/4 inches (56.8 x 38.7 cm.)

In these two figurative series’, Baselitz reacts to the work of his German Expressionist predecessors — Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Emil Nolde, among others—paying homage to his artistic forefathers while simultaneously establishing distance from them. Championed as a leading exponent of German Neo-Expressionist painting, Baselitz displays a newfound freedom from ideological pressures with his Drinkers and Orange Eaters. Baselitz explains, “The ’80s helped me to rearrange everything; I was able to set up a whole range of ideas and experiences anew, which meant I was able to break everything down so I could make something out of it again.”(1)

Furthermore, Baselitz’s impulsive, tactile method of working creates a dynamic and almost animated surface, composed of fractured imagery. Thickly applied paint forms the rudimentary features of his figures, while his forceful handling of the medium emphasizes individual brushstrokes. Baselitz described his painting style for the Orange Eaters as “boxing with both hands, so to speak.”(2) He uses form, style, and color to shatter traditional assumptions—turning his subjects on their heads in order to impart meaning. Baselitz deliberately rendered his figures upside-down on the canvas, defying conventional visual interpretation. This inverted orientation frees his work from connotation without entering the realm of pure abstraction. Beyond the human form, Baselitz’s Drinkers and Orange

Georg Baselitz
6 Schöne, 4 hässliche Porträts: Schönes Porträt 2
(6 Beautiful, 4 Ugly Portraits: Beautiful Portrait 2), 1987-1988
oil on board

Eaters represent a critical time in history and an evolving ideology of liberation.

Baselitz’s work has been widely exhibited throughout the United States and Europe. Major retrospectives of his work have been held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (1983; which later traveled to Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and Kunsthalle Basel); Centre Pompidou, Paris (1993); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1995; traveled to Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, and Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin); Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1996 and 2011); and Royal Academy of Arts, London (2007). Baselitz has represented Germany at the Venice Biennale (1980) and participated in Documenta 5 and 7 in Kassel, Germany (1972 and 1982). Georg Baselitz lives and works in Basel (Switzerland), at the Ammersee (Bavaria, Germany) and in Imperia (Italian Riviera).

Skarstedt is working closely with the artist on this seminal presentation, as well as a detailed catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition. Georg Baselitz: Drinkers and Orange Eaters will be on view at Skarstedt (20 East 79th Street) from May 11 through June 26, 2015.

On View Now: Guggenheim Museum Presents Unprecedented Survey of Italian Futurism

First Comprehensive Overview of the Influential Movement to Be Shown in the U.S.

Featuring Over 360 Works, Including Several Never Before Seen Outside of Italy

Exhibition:                 Italian Futurism, 1909–1944: Reconstructing the Universe
Venue:                         Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue, New York
Location:                   Full rotunda and ramps, High Gallery, Annex Levels 5 and 7
Dates:                           February 21–September 1, 2014

From now through September 1, 2014, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presents Italian Futurism, 1909–1944: Reconstructing the Universe, the first comprehensive overview in the United States of one of Europe’s most important 20th-century avant-garde movements. Featuring over 360 works by more than 80 artists, architects, designers, photographers, and writers, this multidisciplinary exhibition examines the full historical breadth of Futurism, from its 1909 inception with the publication of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s first Futurist manifesto through its demise at the end of World War II. The exhibition includes many rarely seen works, some of which have never traveled outside of Italy. It encompasses not only painting and sculpture, but also the advertising, architecture, ceramics, design, fashion, film, free-form poetry, photography, performance, publications, music, and theater of this dynamic and often contentious movement that championed modernity and insurgency.

Installation view: Italian Futurism, 1909–1944: Reconstructing the Universe, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, February 21–September 1, 2014
Photo: Kris McKay © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

Futurism was launched in 1909 against a background of growing economic and social upheaval. In Marinetti’s “The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism,” published in Le Figaro, he outlined the movement’s key aims, among them: to abolish the past, to champion modernization, and to extol aggression. Although it began as a literary movement, Futurism soon embraced the visual arts as well as advertising, fashion, music and theater, and it spread throughout Italy and beyond. The Futurists rejected stasis and tradition and drew inspiration from the emerging industry, machinery, and speed of the modern metropolis. The first generation of artists created works characterized by dynamic movement and fractured forms, aspiring to break with existing notions of space and time to place the viewer at the center of the artwork. Extending into many mediums, Futurism was intended to be not just an artistic idiom but an entirely new way of life. Central to the movement was the concept of the opera d’arte totale or “total work of art,” in which the viewer is surrounded by a completely Futurist environment.

Installation view: Italian Futurism, 1909–1944: Reconstructing the Universe, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, February 21–September 1, 2014
Photo: Kris McKay © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

Installation view: Italian Futurism, 1909–1944: Reconstructing the Universe, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, February 21–September 1, 2014
Photo: Kris McKay © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

More than two thousand individuals were associated with the movement over its duration. In addition to Marinetti, central figures include: artists Giacomo Balla, Benedetta (Benedetta Cappa Marinetti), Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Fortunato Depero, and Enrico Prampolini; poets and writers Francesco Cangiullo and Rosa Rosà; architect Antonio Sant’Elia; composer Luigi Russolo; photographers Anton Giulio Bragaglia and Tato (Guglielmo Sansoni); dancer Giannina Censi; and ceramicist Tullio d’Albisola. These figures and other lesser-known ones are represented in the exhibition.

Futurism is commonly understood to have had two phases: “heroic” Futurism, which lasted until around 1916, and a later incarnation that arose after World War I and remained active until the early 1940s. Investigations of “heroic” Futurism have predominated and comparatively few exhibitions have explored the subsequent life of the movement; until now, a comprehensive overview of Italian Futurism had yet to be presented in the U.S. Italian art of the 1920s and ’30s is little known outside of its home country, due in part to a taint from Futurism’s sometime association with Fascism. This association complicates the narrative of this avant-garde and makes it all the more necessary to delve into and clarify its full history.

Installation view: Italian Futurism, 1909–1944: Reconstructing the Universe, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, February 21–September 1, 2014
Photo: Kris McKay © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

Installation view: Italian Futurism, 1909–1944: Reconstructing the Universe, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, February 21–September 1, 2014
Photo: Kris McKay © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

Italian Futurism unfolds chronologically, juxtaposing works in different mediums as it traces the myriad artistic languages the Futurists employed as their practice evolved over a 35-year period. The exhibition begins with an exploration of the manifesto as an art form, and proceeds to the Futurists’ catalytic encounter with Cubism in 1911, their exploration of near-abstract compositions, and their early efforts in photography. Ascending the rotunda levels of the museum, visitors follow the movement’s progression as it expanded to include architecture, clothing, design, dinnerware, experimental poetry, and toys. Along the way, it gained new practitioners and underwent several stylistic evolutions—shifting from the fractured spaces of the 1910s to the machine aesthetics (or arte meccanica) of the ’20s, and then to the softer, lyrical forms of the ’30s. Aviation’s popularity and nationalist significance in 1930s Italy led to the swirling, often abstracted, aerial imagery of Futurism’s final incarnation, aeropittura. This novel painting approach united the Futurist interest in nationalism, speed, technology, and war with new and dizzying visual perspectives. The fascination with the aerial spread to other mediums, including ceramics, dance, and experimental aerial photography.

Installation view: Italian Futurism, 1909–1944: Reconstructing the Universe, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, February 21–September 1, 2014
Photo: Kris McKay © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

Installation view: Italian Futurism, 1909–1944: Reconstructing the Universe, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, February 21–September 1, 2014
Photo: Kris McKay © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

The exhibition is enlivened by three films commissioned from documentary filmmaker Jen Sachs, which use archival film footage, documentary photographs, printed matter, writings, recorded declamations, and musical compositions to represent the Futurists’ more ephemeral work and to bring to life their words-in-freedom poems. One film addresses the Futurists’ evening performances and events, called serate, which merged “high” and “low” culture in radical ways and broke down barriers between spectator and performer. Mise-en-scène installations evoke the Futurists’ opera d’arte totaleinterior ensembles, from those executed for the private sphere to those realized under Fascism.

Annual Exhibition of Artwork by New York City Public School Students on View at the Guggenheim Museum

Exhibition:    A Year with Children 2014
Venue:         Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue, New York 
Location:      Annex Level 3
Dates:          May 9–June 18, 2014 

A YEAR WITH CHILDREN 2014
Student artwork
3rd grade, PS 144, Queens, 2014
Photo: Kris McKay © 2014 Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

Now in its 43rd year, Learning Through Art (LTA), the pioneering arts education program of the Guggenheim Museum, presents A Year with Children 2014, an exhibition organized by the Sackler Center for Arts Education at the Guggenheim Museum, May 9–June 18, 2014. The annual exhibition showcases select artworks by students in grades two through six from 11 public schools who participated in LTA during the 2013–14 school year, representing each of New York City’s five boroughs. Approximately one hundred creative and imaginative works, including collages, drawings, found objects, prints, paintings, sculptures, and photographs will be on display during the six-week installation.

A YEAR WITH CHILDREN 2014
Student artwork
3rd grade, PS 48, Staten Island, 2014
Photo: Kris McKay © 2014 Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

A Year with Children is an annual exhibition that presents art by students participating in the Learning Through Art program which places professional teaching artists in New York City public elementary schools. The teaching artists collaborate with classroom teachers to develop art projects that teach students art skills and techniques while exploring ideas and themes related to the school curriculum. The program encourages curiosity, critical thinking, and ongoing collaborative investigation. Additionally, LTA immerses students in the artistic process, encouraging them to view themselves as artists. Each student is given a sketchbook and an artist’s apron. Throughout the program, teaching artists model practices and explorations similar to those that they use to spark their own creativity. Students’ investigations are also inspired by the exhibitions they visit at the Guggenheim during the school year. When viewing art, students participate in inquiry-based discussions that encourage careful observation and interpretation.

LTA STUDENTS IN THE CLASSROOM. 4th grade, PS 86, Bronx, 2014
© The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York

In the LTA program, students investigated local and world communities, history, nature, change, and identity. While engaged with these themes, students explored a variety of materials, as reflected in the works on view in A Year with Children 2014. For example, Lotería Character Cards created by the students at PS 88 in Ridgewood will be grouped onto boards so visitors may interact with the Mexican Lotería game of chance. Invented board games and characters created by the fourth graders at PS 9 in Prospect Heights will also be on display, as will mixed-media sculptures inspired by the characters in books read by fourth graders at Chinatown’s PS 42.

LTA STUDENTS IN THE CLASSROOM. 3rd grade, PS 8, Brooklyn, 2014
© The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York

LTA was founded in 1970 by Natalie Kovner Lieberman in response to the elimination of art and music programs in New York City public schools. Since its inception, LTA has served nearly 150,000 children and their families, primarily in New York City public schools.

2013–14 School Year
Nearly 1,500 students in grade grades two through six at 11 public schools participated in 20-week projects led by 16 LTA teaching artists, who reached 55 classes during the 2013–14 school year. The participating schools are: in Manhattan, PS 28 (Washington Heights), PS 184 (Lower East Side), and PS 42 (Chinatown); in the Bronx, PS 86 (Kingsbridge); in Staten Island, PS 48 (Grasmere); in Queens, PS 88 (Ridgewood), PS 144 (Forest Hills), and PS 317 (Rockaway Park); and, in Brooklyn, PS 8 (Brooklyn Heights), PS 9 (Prospect Heights), and PS 676 (Red Hook).

LTA STUDENTS IN THE CLASSROOM. 3rd grade, PS 8, Brooklyn, 2014
© The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York

A Year with Children 2014 is organized by the Education Department at the Guggenheim Museum: Greer Kudon, Senior Education Manager; Lindsay Smilow, Associate Manager; and Emmy Goldin, Education Associate.