Gansevoort Gallery, New York City.

Eye of Modernism Features the Work of more than 40 American Artists

SANTA FE, N.M. – Since the last decades of the Nineteenth Century, the word “modern” has been used to characterize numerous but widely divergent developments in the arts in America. “Eye of Modernism”, which opens at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum on March 23, 2001, brings together a stunning collection of works on paper dating from the 1890s to the 1980s, each of which has been considered “modern.”

Works by approximately 40 different American artists including Stuart Davis, Charles Demuth, Richard Diebenkorn, Arshile Gorky, Philip Guston, Carl Holty, Jasper Johns, John Marin, Robert Motherwell, Georgia O’Keeffe, Philip Pearlstein, Man Ray, Everett Shinn, John Sloan, Joseph Stella, and Andy Warhol will be on display. Many of these works have been selected from the extensive collection of works on paper owned by the Milwaukee Art Museum, but some have been provided through the generosity of private collectors.

Organized by Museum Curator and noted O’Keeffe scholar Barbara Buhler Lynes, this is the fifth exhibition organized by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum since 1999 whose mission is to perpetuate the artistic legacy of Georgia O’Keeffe and the study and interpretation of American modernism. In addition to exhibitions selected from its permanent collection, the museum organizes four to five changing exhibitions a year.

According to Lynes, “modern” has proven to be an extremely elusive term. “For example, the early Twentieth Century works of Marsden Hartley, John Marin, and Georgia O’Keeffe are considered modern, as are works of a vastly different character by artists of much later decades, such as the abstract expressionist, Pop, and Neo-Realist works of Arshile Gorky, Robert Motherwell, Andy Warhol, and Philip Pearlstein,” says Lynes.

“Moreover, the word ‘modern’ is included in the name of the movement of the last part of the Twentieth Century that supposedly opposes it: the post-modern. We’ve included works by many artists whose works were considered modern at the time they were completed that demonstrate the on-going dialogue in Twentieth Century American Art between the opposing forces of abstraction and representation. The exhibition provides an overview of the kinds of images that have characterized the modern over the last one hundred years and raises the issue of its meaning as a phenomenon in American art,” Lynes explains.

The exhibition runs through September 4, 2001. It will be on view during the events that have been planned to celebrate the opening of the Georgia O’Keeffe Research Center on July 13, 2001. These events include a symposium, “Defining American Modernism,” July 12-14, 2001.

“Eye of Modernism” will be housed in two or three galleries. Paintings from the permanent collection will be on view in the rest of the museum. A public reception is scheduled for Friday, March 23, from 5 to 8 p.m.

During the months of July through October, the museum is open seven days a week. Hours are Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m. until 5 p.m.; Wednesday from noon to 8 p.m.; Friday from 10 a.m. until 8 p.m. From November through June the Museum is closed Wednesday. For information, 505/995-0785.