BARTON BENES Lot # 25
BARTON BENES New York, New York Reliquarium Mixed media 32 x 40 inches (mounted), 2001 Range $4000-5000 Barton Lidice Benes was born in Westwood, New Jersey, and educated in the early 1960s at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. Benes became internationally known in the 1980s as the "money artist,” a period when he used recycled currency as a collage medium on sculptural and flat forms. More recently, Barton began making “Museum Pieces,” displays of collectible objects (often belonging to well-known personalities) and relics which he mounts, labels, and places in museum-like containers. The North Dakota Museum of Art’s Donor Wall, created by Barton, exemplifies this style. Another similar work, Ebb Tide, resulted from a commission by the North Dakota Museum of Art for its recent nationally known and award-winning flood exhibition. The work remains in the Museum's permanent collection. Benes has an extensive exhibition history. In the past decade he has shown his work in Sweden, Canada, New Mexico, the Czech Republic, Portugal, Sweden, Russia, New York, and the North Dakota Museum of Art. Last year alone he exhibited at the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow; the Aldrich Museum, Ridgefield, CT; and the Senior Shopmaker Gallery, New York City. Barton's work has been collected by the National Museum of Art in Washington, D.C., the Chicago Art Institute, the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, and Chase Manhattan Bank in New York, among others. He is represented by Lennon Weinberg Gallery of New York City. In September 2002 Abrams will publish Curiosa, a book about Benes’ “museums.” John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, is writing the introduction.