E XHIB ITI O NS
LEGACY
THE EMILY FISHER LANDAU COLLECTION
February 2 – April 27, 2014 These are the bold, contemporary, and controversial artists who defined the art of our era. These artists took risks stylistically, thematically, conceptually, and pushed the very boundaries of art.
conceptualism, postmodernism, questions about the relevance of painting in the aftermath of minimalism, debates about representation, “culture wars,” and a revived interest in personal narratives.
Legacy: The Emily Fisher Landau Collection features works of art by some of the most important, groundbreaking, gamechanging American artists—Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Barbara Kruger—and features in-depth presentations by Ed Ruscha, Richard Artschwager, and Jasper Johns, highlighting works spanning their entire careers.
Legacy also illuminates the sociopolitical issues at the forefront of the 1980s downtown New York scene. Important works by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Robert Mapplethorpe, Peter Hujar, Nan Goldin, Keith Haring, David Wojnarowicz, and Lorna Simpson tackle tough subject matter, including AIDS, politics, and gender and race issues.
Drawn from Emily Fisher Landau’s spectacular donation of over 400 modern and contemporary works of art to the Whitney Museum of American Art, this exhibition of 80 works traces the themes and ideas that have shaped art since the late 1960s—abstraction,
This exhibition was organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and is the third installment in a three-year, three-exhibition partnership between GRAM and the Whitney.
ABOVE: Ed Ruscha. b. 1937. The Act of Letting a Person into Your Home, (1983) Oil on canvas, 84 3/8 x 137 1/2 x 1 3/4 in. (214.3 x 349.3 x 4.4 cm) Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; partial and promised gift of Emily Fisher Landau 2002.280. © Ed Ruscha Photograph by Jerry L. Thompson
NOW AT THE GRAND RAPIDS ART MUSEUM
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