A TRIBUTE TO A LEGENDARY COWGIRL

Anne Windfohr Marion’s contributions to the Modern are underscored in a new show.

BY ANTHONY FALCON

“E very great museum has its primary patrons who step up in ways that change their museums forever,” says Marla Price, director of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. “Anne Marion’s generosity to the Modern was deep and broad and moved the museum to a new level of importance and recognition.” The landmark exhibition Modern Masters: A Tribute to Anne Windfohr Marion, which looks back nearly half a century at Anne Windfohr Marion’s contributions to the museum’s foundation, commemorates one of the Modern’s greatest patrons. Marion’s generosity to many institutions is celebrated throughout the art world and beyond. She was the founder of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, and funded projects for Texas Tech University, Texas Christian University, and the Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital, among many others. However, the Modern Museum of Fort Worth may have held a special place in her heart. Modern Masters, which includes 80 works by 47 artists, begins with three extraordinary works from her collection, given to the Modern through her estate in 2021: Arshile Gorky’s The Plow and the Song, 1947; Willem de Kooning’s Two Women, 1954–55; and Mark Rothko’s majestic White Band No. 27, 1954. The Modern’s former chief curator, and the curator of this exhibition, Michael Auping, has described the gift of these paintings as “a monumental addition to the museum’s collection, each work a classic example of the artist’s signature style.” A scholar of abstract expressionism, Auping elaborates: “The Plow and the Song is an homage to the central theme of Gorky’s imagery— memories of the farms and landscape of his homeland of Armenia, and de Kooning’s Two Women stands perfectly in the center of the development of the artist’s famous group of Woman paintings. White Band is nothing less than a masterpiece within Rothko’s oeuvre. A diaphanous blue atmosphere holds a mysterious white band in its field, creating an immersive experience that you can only find in his greatest paintings.”

The exhibition will combine these stellar paintings, seen together here for the first time, with a major group of works by Jackson Pollock, purchased by the Modern with the help of Marion and her Burnett Foundation. The works, acquired by the Modern in 1985, poignantly trace Pollock’s expressive journey between psychological figuration and abstraction.

In 1995, Marion provided a $1 million grant for the acquisition of photography after 1970, which allowed the Modern to acquire major works by an international field of artists including Bernd and Hilla Becher, Sally Mann, Yasumasa Morimura, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Carrie Mae Weems, among many others also in this exhibition.

In 2001, Marion donated more than $12 million to the museum to purchase major works by key artists, resulting in the acquisition of art by Francis Bacon, Howard Hodgkin, Anselm Kiefer, Gerhard Richter, Sean Scully, and Richard Serra. And among her greatest legacies will be her leadership in the drive for a new building for the museum, designed by the world-renowned Japanese architect Tadao Ando. “It is a joy to bring these works together in the building she loved,” says Price. P

Clockwise from top left: Mark Rothko, White Band No. 27, 1954, oil on canvas, 81.25 x 87 in. Collection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, gift of Anne Windfohr Marion; David Smith, Dida Becca Merry X, 1964, steel, 74.25 x 30.50 x 18 in. Collection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, gift of Anne Windfohr Marion; Ellsworth Kelly, Spectrum III, 1967, oil on canvas, 33.25 × 108.62 in. Collection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, gift of Anne Windfohr Marion; Arshile Gorky, The Plow and the Song, 1947, oil on burlap, 52.12 x 64.25 in. Collection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, gift of Anne Windfohr Marion; Willem de Kooning, Two Women, 1954–55, oil and charcoal on canvas, 40 x 50 in. Collection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, gift of Anne Windfohr Marion.