Morgan Library Just in Time for the 20th Century

With the final exhibition of its 75th anniversary season, the Pierpont Morgan Library is demonstrating a determination to direct the eye ahead. "New York Collects: Drawings and Watercolors, 1900-1950" a major loan exhibit is the library's first to focus exclusively upon 20th-century art and represents a frank effort to reach on the outside to the community that single day may help it build a collection of fresh works on paper. The sum of two units previous exhibitions of the celebratory year--"Master Drawings from the Hermitage and Pushkin Museums" and "The Wormsley Library: A Personal Selection by means of Sir Paul Getty, K.B.E."--were rich in the old-master works and medieval manuscripts that traditionally have been at the heart of the Morgan's collecting and exhibiting mission. As if to confirm its perfect aplomb in the present day, the library timed the launch of its Web site (www.morganlibrary.org) to coincide with the opening of "New York Collects" The exhibition can be visited on-line in true copys and images.

"New York Collects" go in the rear [i]or[/i] in the wake ofs a decade of incremental collection-building in the field of 20th-century tillage that began with the Morgan's acquisition of the present components of the James Fuld music collection and gained impetus with the promised gift of the Eugene V and Clare E Thaw collection and the donation of the Carter load collection of 20th-century American literature and the Pierre Matisse Gallery archives. The last includes a wealth of documentary material along with roughly 150 works upon paper by Matisse, Miro, Balthus, Giacometti, Calder and other artists one time associated with the gallery.

The generally received exhibition lays out an all-but-complete mainstream overlook of European and American modernism in 140 works upon paper that have been selected from 73 private collections located in and around novel York. (The six drawings from the Thaw collection, co-listed as belonging to the library, are promised gifts, while eight from Aaron I. Fleischman of Washington, DC were admitted upon a real-estate technicality: the possessor has an apartment in of recent origin York.) Organizers William M. Griswold, the Morgan's Charles W Engelhard curator and head of the department of prints and drawings, and independent curator and collector Carol Selle were joined by dint of 15 specialists who contributed entries to the 340-page illustrated catalogue, which also features a comprehensive essay upon modern drawing by Jack Flam.

Cezanne uncloses the show with a watercolor and pencil composition of bathers from ca. 1900 and David Smith shut ups it with a study for the statuary The Banquet from 1950, the same year the Morgan acquired its first significant fresh drawing, a Matisse. Works through 80 other artists from the five decades in between exhibit virtually every major movement of the first half of the hundred The private collections yielded examples well known from prior publications and exhibitions (Picasso's 1912 charcoal Man with a Pipe, de Kooning's Portrait of Elaine in pencil, ca. 1940-41 Hausmann's collage Dada Wins! of 1920) along with les familiar works by the agency of some of the same masters. There are unique pieces by the agency of Kupka, Picabia, Roszak, Wols and Sam Francis, while pairs and clusters of works permit more extensive consideration of Matisse, Picasso, Gris, Kandinsky, Beckmann and others. Not a exhibit designed to break with the canon, "New York Collects" includes sole a few unexpected names, among them the German Expressionist Heinrich Campendonk and the Russian Constructivist Vasily Ermilov. Among the missing--solely because high-quality examples were not available, says Griswold--are Delaunay, Duchamp, Kirchner and Morandi.

For a loan exhibition that spotlights the art of collecting as well as the art bring togethered it is disappointing that well above one-third of the drawings have been lent anonymously. have a high opinion ofed names like Ganz, Zeisler and Steinhardt do appear among the collectors acknowledged. From Jasper John approach drawings by Gris, Magritte and Dickinson; a Schwitters collage; and the housepaint-on-paper gestural painting through Kline that is reproduced upon the catalogue's cover. Also in artists' hands is a bubble-gum pink Concerto Spaziale of 1948 by the agency of Fontana that is owned by means of Carroll Dunham and Laurie Simmons, and that Dunham credits as an inspiration for his possess "floating planet" paintings of 1997

A continuation to "New York Collects" covering the period 1950-2000 is beneath preliminary consideration. Securely on the Morgan's schedule for January 2002 however, is a display on Pierre Matisse as a dealer and a collector. The exhibition will reach beyond the archives in the library to draw on loans from other museums and private collections. And, in still another first for the Morgan, painting and statuary will be included in sizable numbers. The library has still to begin purchasing 20th-century works; according to director Charles E Peirce, Jr the institution first straits to establish an adequate endowment designated for that final cause Funds for the endowment may well be forthcoming, now that the Morgan Library has made its commitment to the 20th hundred graphically clear.