REFRAMING AMERICAN ART: SELECTIONS FROM THE
ROY R. NEUBERGER COLLECTION
The works of art included in this exhibition are selections from Roy R. Neuberger’s (American, born 1903) generous gift to Purchase College, State University of New York, which helped to establish the Neuberger Museum of Art.
The exhibition sheds light on the aesthetic and social commitments of leading American artists in the middle of the twentieth century.
Works by the following artists are on view:*
• Milton Avery
• William Baziotes
• Romare Bearden
• Harry Bertoia
• Forest Bess
• James Brooks
• Alexander Calder
• Ralston Crawford
• Stuart Davis
• Richard Diebenkorn
• Willem de Kooning
• Herbert Ferber
• Lyonel Feininger
• John Flannagan
• Helen Frankenthaler
• Ilse Getz
• Adolph Gottlieb
• Grace Hartigan
• Eva Hesse
• Hans Hofmann
• Edward Hopper
• Lee Krasner
• Jacques Lipchitz
• Morris Louis
• Matta
• Elie Nadelman
• Georgia O'Keeffe
• David Park
• Jackson Pollock
• Milton Resnick
• Mark Rothko
• Ben Shahn
• Charles Sheeler
• David Smith
• Joseph Stella
• Mark Tobey
Additionally on view are five works of art by Charles Demuth, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Horace Pippin on extended loan from the private collection of Roy R. Neuberger.
Roy Neuberger returned from a five-year stay in Paris in 1929, determined to go to work and collect art. He found an entry-level job on Wall Street, where he also met his future wife, Marie. He began his collection in the 1930s, and by the end of the decade Roy Neuberger was collecting seriously and had acquired major works by living artists.
He states, I collect because I love works of art and because, when I began, I believed that the contemporary world should buy the work of contemporary artists. I still do. When I started, I felt that in a small way I could render a service, because I would be able to help artists who were young and struggling.
At the heart of the exhibition is art of the 1940s and 1950s. This period in history was one of great expansion in the United States. New York was especially exciting, with the World's Fair in 1939 at Flushing Meadow, Queens and with WWII bringing many European immigrants to the United States.
The influx of artists infused an already vital New York with a stimulating expansion of ideas. New York City became the established center of the art world, a place in which lively debates created a climate where crosscurrents not only proliferated at a rapid pace, but where artists gained support from a relatively small but influential group of critics, galleries, museums and private collectors.
No longer a contemporary collection, but rather one of historical importance, the paintings and sculptures here reflect the rich diversity in American art before the 1960s.
Reframing American Art: Selections from the Roy R. Neuberger Collection is on view ongoing.
*List updated July 21, 2009.
