Date: Fri 02-Jul-1999

Publication: Ant

Author: CAROLL

Quick Words:

Abby-Aldrich-Rockefeller-MoMA

Full Text:

Abby Aldrich Rockefeller And Print Collecting

NEW YORK CITY -- Abby Aldrich Rockefeller (1874-1948), a noted philanthropist

and one of the Museum of Modern Art's three founders, was the single most

important force in the establishment of the museum's print department.

Donating her own collection of 1,600 prints, Mrs Rockefeller hoped to deepen

the understanding of modern printmaking and encourage private collecting of

prints both for aesthetic pleasure and for the support such collecting would

provide living artists.

The MoMA is presenting "Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and Print Collecting: An

Early Mission for MoMA," a display of approximately 100 prints that Mrs

Rockefeller enjoyed in her private collection before donating them to the

museum. The exhibition's rooms will be modeled after the Art Deco private

gallery she had on the top floor of her residence in the 1930s.

Mrs Rockefeller formed her modern art collection primarily between 1925 and

1935, acquiring mainly works on paper, such as watercolors, drawings, and most

significantly, prints. While Mrs Rockefeller's collection included many prints

by the most celebrated modern artists of Europe, most were by Americans living

and working in New York City. For this group she could be a patron in the

fullest sense of the word, providing direct assistance through her purchases

and also playing a role in garnering recognition and support for the artists'

work.

Mrs Rockefeller loved New York City -- her home for more than 45 years -- and

the subject matter of her American art collection focused on this metropolis.

Her prints include modernist interpretations of New York's elevated subways,

bridges, and skyscrapers by Stuart Davis, John Marin, and Charles Sheeler, as

well as studies of the city's inhabitants by John Sloan, George Bellows, and

Reginald Marsh. Her collection provides lively views of subway riders on their

way to work, shoppers loaded down with purchases, apartment dwellers making

use of their roofs, and revelers in Central Park and at Coney Island.

German Expressionist prints, with their bold compositions, unrefined technique

and often uncompromising subjects, were another of Mrs Rockefeller's interests

when she turned her attention to modernism. Erich Heckel, Mas Pechstein, and

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff of "Die Brucke," as well as Max Beckmann, Kathe

Kollwitz, and Wilhelm Lehmbruck of a slightly later period, are among the

artists whose prints could be found on her walls. However, her favorite among

the Germans was Emil Nolde -- represented in the exhibition by works such as

"Frauenkopf III (Head of Woman III)," (1912); and she collected a

comprehensive sampling of his etchings, woodcuts, and lithographs.

Mexican art and culture were also of keen interest to Mrs Rockefeller in the

1920s and 1930s, when she worked actively to promote friendship between the US

and Mexico. This period was one in which the muralists Diego Rivera, David

Alfaro Siqueiros, and Jose Clemente Orozco, known as los tres grandes (the

three great ones), were widely celebrated and sought after for commissions

that brought them regularly to this country.

Yet in Mrs Rockefeller's collection, after American artists, the French were

represented by the largest number of works. She believed that modernism

originated with avant-garde painting in France in the late Nineteenth Century,

and her collection included works by the Impressionist Edgar Degas, the

Post-Impressionist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and the Symbolists Odilon Redon

and Paul Gauguin. Her donation of 61 lithographs by Toulouse-Lautrec, covering

the full range of the artist's important printed oeuvre, made the museum a

major repository of his work. However, she also acquired Twentieth Century

works by artists such as Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, with figurative art

of greater interest to her than abstraction, even in the case of Picasso.

As Mrs Rockefeller's art collection grew, she wanted to display it in her New

York City residence. She chose a top-floor area formerly used by her children

and had it renovated by American interior and furniture designer Donald

Deskey, in collaboration with architect Duncan Candler. The room for

exhibiting prints had the most radical design. Gray Bakelite walls, gray

carpeting, evenly distributed lighting, and streamlined furnishings created a

neutral, complementary background for the art. The walls supported an

ingenious hanging system that was both decorative and functional. Horizontal,

channeled metal strips allowed prints to be displayed with movable hanging

devices so Mrs Rockefeller could change her installations frequently. The

present exhibition evokes the spirit of her radical, modern gallery that stood

in such stark contrast to the traditional decor elsewhere in her home.

As the museum planned a new building in 1939, Mrs Rockefeller decided to

donate her collection of prints to the museum with the understanding that a

print room would be incorporated to house her collection. Unfortunately, the

war effort and related programming preempted the opening of the print room and

it was not until 1949 that it was finally inaugurated. Mrs Rockefeller died in

1948 and did not see the establishment of the curatorial department that had

been one of her missions for the Museum of Modern Art. The Print Room, the

first such facility devoted to the modern period, was named in her honor.

Today, the print collection has grown to 40,000 objects. The Abby Aldrich

Rockefeller Print Room, staffed by specialists, is the site of numerous

educational activities and is open to the public by appointment. A storage

area holds the collection and employs a filing system that allows for easy

retrieval; a library and research area provides the scholarly tools needed for

the study of prints; and a spacious study center allows for prints to be

examined quietly and first hand, outside their frames.

For appointments for the Print Room, 212/708-9567.