Events
In Conversation
New Social Environment
Ode to Willem de Kooning
Saturday, March 19, 2022, 4pm EDT
As part of the Brooklyn Rail’s online series New Social Environment, John Elderfield, Joan Levy Hepburn, David Reed, Richard Shiff, Mark Stevens, Robert Storr, Charles Stuckey, Annalyn Swan, Flora Yukhnovich, and Phong H. Bui will be in conversation to celebrate the life and work of Willem de Kooning on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death. De Kooning Foundation executive director Amy Schichtel will introduce the discussion. To join the online event, register at brooklynrail.org.
Willem de Kooning in his studio, East Hampton, New York, 1971. Artwork © 2022 The Willem de Kooning Foundation/Artists Rights Society, New York. Photo: © 2022 The Estate of Dan Budnik. All rights reserved
Symposium
When New York looks at the School of Paris
Tuesday, November 30, 2021, 4–10am est (10am–4pm cet)
An online symposium will take place in conjunction with the exhibition Chaïm Soutine/Willem de Kooning, la peinture incarnée, currently on view at the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris. At 4:30am est (10:30am cet) John Elderfield, chief curator emeritus of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, will speak with Claire Bernardi, chief curator of paintings at the Musée d’Orsay. The pair will discuss responses to the 1950 MoMA exhibition of Chaïm Soutine’s work as seen in Willem de Kooning’s paintings and in the writings of critic Clement Greenberg. To join the online event, register at www.musee-orangerie.fr.
Willem de Kooning, Woman, 1953, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC © 2021 The Willem de Kooning Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
In Conversation
Arthur Lubow and Mark Stevens on “Soutine/de Kooning”
Wednesday, July 14, 2021, 12pm EDT
Join art critics Arthur Lubow and Mark Stevens for a conversation on the occasion of the exhibition Soutine/de Kooning: Conversations in Paint at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia. The pair will discuss painters Chaïm Soutine (1893–1943) and Willem de Kooning (1904–1997), their respective techniques, and how they pushed the capabilities of oil paint to create surfaces with the tactile, pliable, squirming quality of flesh. To join the online event, register at tickets.barnesfoundation.org.
Willem de Kooning, . . . Whose Name Was Writ in Water, 1975, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York © 2021 The Willem de Kooning Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Tour
A line (a)round an idea
Selected Works on Paper
Saturday, June 22, 2019, 11am
Gagosian, Geneva
This event has been canceled.
Join us for a tour of A line (a)round an idea at Gagosian, Geneva. The exhibition, which presents black-and-white works on paper spanning a period of seventy years, includes work by Richard Artschwager, Georg Baselitz, Bruce Conner, Willem de Kooning, Günther Förg, Sam Francis, Keith Haring, Christine Hiebert, Hans Hofmann, Franz Kline, Brice Marden, Henri Matisse, Robert Motherwell, Ad Reinhardt, Richard Serra, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, and others. Gagosian’s Johan Nauckhoff will give an overview of the exhibition, focusing on ways in which modern and contemporary artists have explored the clarity and activating power of the simple line, mark, splatter, or stroke. To attend the free event, RSVP to genevatours@gagosian.com. Space is limited.
Installation view, A line (a)round an idea: Selected Works on Paper, Gagosian, Geneva, May 2–July 27, 2019. Artwork, left to right: © Cy Twombly Foundation; © 2019 Richard Artschwager/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © 2019 The Franz Kline Estate/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Richard Serra; © 2019 Dedalus Foundation, Inc./Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Announcements
Support
Tri-State Relief Fund
The Willem de Kooning Foundation, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Teiger Foundation, and the Cy Twombly Foundation, as part of their respective COVID-19 relief efforts, have established an emergency relief grant program that will provide $1,250,000 in aid to non-salaried visual arts workers in the tristate area who have experienced financial hardship from lack of income or opportunity as a direct result of the COVID-19 crisis. The program will be administered in partnership with nonprofit arts service organization New York Foundation for the Arts.
Tri-state area of the United States
Museum Exhibitions
On View
The Whitney’s Collection
Selections from 1900 to 1965
Opened June 28, 2019
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
whitney.org
This exhibition of more than 120 works, drawn entirely from the Whitney’s collection, is inspired by the founding history of the museum. The Whitney was established in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney to champion the work of living American artists. A sculptor and a patron, Whitney recognized both the importance of contemporary American art and the need to support the artists who made it. The collection she assembled foregrounds how artists uniquely reveal the complexity and beauty of American life. Work by Jay DeFeo, Willem de Kooning, Roy Lichtenstein, Man Ray, Ed Ruscha, Andy Warhol, and Tom Wesselmann is included.
Installation view, The Whitney’s Collection: Selections from 1900 to 1965, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, June 28, 2019–May 2022. Artwork, left to right: © 2020 The Jay DeFeo Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Norman Lewis; © 2020 The Franz Kline Estate/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Ron Amstutz
On View
Willem de Kooning e l’Italia
Through September 15, 2024
Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice
www.gallerieaccademia.it
This exhibition, whose title translates to Willem de Kooning and Italy, investigates the impact of de Kooning’s two visits to Italy, in 1959 and 1969, on his work. Curated by Gary Garrels and Mario Codognato and comprised of about seventy-five works—the largest showing of de Kooning’s art in Italy to date—Willem de Kooning e l’Italia offers a comprehensive survey of the artist’s most expressive period.
Willem de Kooning, Villa Borghese, 1960, Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain © 2024 The Willem de Kooning Foundation/SIAE
On View
Revolutions
Art from the Hirshhorn Collection, 1860–1960
Through April 20, 2025
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC
hirshhorn.si.edu
Revolutions is a major survey of 270 artworks by 126 artists from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden’s permanent collection. Celebrating the museum’s fiftieth anniversary, the exhibition aims to capture the shifting cultural landscapes of a century defined by new currents in science and philosophy and ever-increasing mechanization. Shown alongside these historic works are contributions from nineteen contemporary artists whose practices demonstrate how many revolutionary ideas from a hundred years ago remain critical today. Work by Francis Bacon, Amoako Boafo, Alexander Calder, Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Rick Lowe, Sally Mann, Man Ray, Henry Moore, Pablo Picasso, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, and Cy Twombly is included.
Rick Lowe, Fire #4: This Time Athens, 2023, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC © Rick Lowe Studio
Closed
A Dark Hymn
Highlights from the Hill Collection
March 1–April 13, 2024
Hill Art Foundation, New York
hillartfoundation.org
A Dark Hymn celebrates the five-year anniversary of the Hill Art Foundation by examining the collection through the lens of Valentin Bousch’s sixteenth-century stained glass window, The Creation and the Expulsion from Paradise (1533), which is permanently installed in the foundation’s Chelsea building. The exhibition places work from the four major categories of the collection—Renaissance and Baroque bronzes, old master paintings, canvases and sculptures by modern masters, and contemporary art—in dialogue with the window. Work by Willem de Kooning, Mark Grotjahn, Albert Oehlen, Ed Ruscha, Rudolf Stingel, Sarah Sze, and Christopher Wool is included.
Installation view, A Dark Hymn: Highlights from the Hill Collection, Hill Art Foundation, New York, March 1–April 13, 2024. Artwork, left to right: © Ed Ruscha, © Robert Gober, © Caroline Kent, © Sarah Sze. Photo: Matthew Herrmann
Closed
El eco de Picasso
October 2, 2023–March 30, 2024
Museo Picasso Málaga, Spain
museopicassomalaga.org
Organized as part of Picasso Celebration 1973–2023, a series of international exhibitions and events commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Pablo Picasso’s death, The Echo of Picasso focuses on his influence on twentieth-century art. The exhibition places Picasso’s practice in dialogue with work by more than fifty artists, including Francis Bacon, Georg Baselitz, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Willem de Kooning, Thomas Houseago, Ewa Juszkiewicz, Richard Prince, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Cy Twombly, Tom Wesselmann, and Franz West.
Installation view, El eco de Picasso, Museo Picasso Málaga, Spain, October 2, 2023–March 30, 2024. Artwork, left to right: © Rebecca Warren, © Richard Prince. Photo: Pablo Asenjo, courtesy Museo Picasso Málaga
Closed
Beautiful, Vivid, Self-contained
April 21–July 21, 2023
Hill Art Foundation, New York
hillartfoundation.org
Beautiful, Vivid, Self-contained is an exhibition curated by David Salle that brings together paintings and sculptures by artists working across different eras, mediums, and geographies to explore the notion of affinity between works of art. Alongside a painting by Salle from 1988, work by Francis Bacon, Willem de Kooning, Mark Grotjahn, Brice Marden, Albert Oehlen, Pablo Picasso, Cy Twombly, and Christopher Wool is included.
Albert Oehlen, Untitled, 1990 © Albert Oehlen
Closed
Transformers
Meisterwerke Der Sammlung Frieder Burda Im Dialog Mit Künstlichen Wesen
December 10, 2022–April 30, 2023
Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden, Germany
www.museum-frieder-burda.de
This exhibition, whose subtitle translates to Masterpieces of the Frieder Burda Collection in Dialogue with Artificial Beings, offers visitors the opportunity to meet artist-made avatars—human machines that are able to move, talk, and learn—and observe the richness of their movements, language, and responses. By juxtaposing these beings with key works from the museum’s collection, Transformers aims to create multidimensional experiences that reflect our increasingly artificially transformed world. Work by Willem de Kooning, Pablo Picasso, Gerhard Richter, and Jordan Wolfson is included.
Jordan Wolfson, Female Figure, 2014 © Jordan Wolfson. Photo: Markus Tretter, Kunsthaus Bregenz
Closed
Ways of Freedom
Jackson Pollock to Maria Lassnig
October 15, 2022–January 22, 2023
Albertina Modern, Vienna
www.albertina.at
Ways of Freedom examines the creative interplay between Abstract Expressionism and Art Informel in a transatlantic exchange and dialogue from the mid-1940s to the end of the Cold War. Exploring radically impulsive approaches to form, color, and material, the exhibition includes more than ninety works by nearly fifty artists with loans from museums worldwide. This exhibition has traveled from the Museum Barberini in Potsdam, Germany under the title The Shape of Freedom: International Abstraction after 1945. Work by Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, and Simon Hantaï is included.
Helen Frankenthaler, Beach Scene, 1961, Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, New York © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Closed
Frisson
The Richard E. Lang and Jane Lang Davis Collection
October 15, 2021–November 27, 2022
Seattle Art Museum
www.seattleartmuseum.org
This exhibition celebrates the Friday Foundation’s gift of nineteen artworks from the Lang Collection to the Seattle Art Museum in honor of Seattle collectors Richard E. Lang and Jane Lang Davis. Dating from 1945 to 1976, the paintings, drawings, and sculptures in Frisson represent mature works and pivotal moments of artistic development from some of the most influential American and European artists of the postwar period. Work by Francis Bacon, Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, and Alberto Giacometti is included.
Francis Bacon, Study for a Portrait, 1967, installation view, Seattle Art Museum © The Estate of Francis Bacon. Photo: Jueqian Fang
Closed
The Shape of Freedom
International Abstraction after 1945
June 4–September 25, 2022
Museum Barberini, Potsdam, Germany
www.museum-barberini.de
The Shape of Freedom examines the creative interplay between Abstract Expressionism and Art Informel in transatlantic exchange and dialogue, from the mid-1940s to the end of the Cold War. Exploring radically impulsive approaches to form, color, and material, the exhibition includes more than ninety works by nearly fifty artists with loans from museums worldwide. Work by Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, and Simon Hantaï is included.
Installation view, The Shape of Freedom: International Abstraction after 1945, Museum Barberini, Potsdam, Germany, June 4–September 25, 2022. Artwork, left to right: © The Estate of Morris Louis/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Germany 2022; © 2022 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Closed
America. Entre rêves et réalités
La collection du Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Collection
June 9–September 11, 2022
Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Canada
www.mnbaq.org
Featuring more than a hundred paintings, photographs, sculptures, and video works drawn from the permanent collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, this exhibition, whose title translates to America. Between Dreams and Realities, offers a broad overview of modern and contemporary American art. Organized thematically, it looks carefully and critically at the notion of the American dream and uncovers how artists have variously grappled with questions of identity, the challenges of globalization, the realities of everyday life in America, and the complexities of its technological and political revolutions. Work by Alexander Calder, Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Sally Mann, Man Ray, Brice Marden, Nam June Paik, Ed Ruscha, Andy Warhol, and Mary Weatherford is included.
Mary Weatherford, Engine, 2014, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC © Mary Weatherford. Photo: Fredrik Nilsen Studio
Closed
Albert Oehlen
“Grandi quadri miei con piccoli quadri di altri”
September 5, 2021–February 20, 2022
Museo d’arte della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, Switzerland
masilugano.ch
In this exhibition, Albert Oehlen: “Big Paintings by Me with Small Paintings by Others”, select works from Oehlen’s personal art collection are on view alongside some of his most significant paintings. In staging this large-scale exhibition, Oehlen aims to make relationships perceptible between his artworks and those by artists whose practices he has long admired. Work by Richard Artschwager, Willem de Kooning, Duane Hanson, Mike Kelley, and Franz West, among others, is included.
Albert Oehlen, Untitled, 1997/2005 © Albert Oehlen. Photo: Lothar Schnepf