Rose Art Museum announces major gifts of contemporary art

Total value of gifts tops $2 million

WALTHAM, Mass. – The Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University has received several new works of art from a variety of donors, including a collection of contemporary art valued at more than $1 million. The total value of recent gifts exceeds $2 million. The collection, consisting of close to 40 works of art largely from 1990 into the present decade, represents a broad spectrum of work from painting to sculpture to installation. Artists include Mike Kelley, Jessica Stockholder, James Hyde, Beat Streuli, David Reed and a host of others from the US and Europe.

“This is an enormously important gift to us,” said Michael Rush, the Henry and Lois Foster Director of the Rose Art Museum. “Our already renowned collection is greatly enhanced by the addition of these artists, many of whom are still emerging and shaping the art of our time.” The New York based donor wishes to remain anonymous, Rush added.

Gerald Fineberg, chair of the Rose Board of Overseers, said the donor has been an admirer of the Rose and its great exhibitions for a long time. “This gift provides the bridge from our extraordinary holdings from the 1950s and 60s to the present,” Fineberg added.

Another gift made by Brandeis alum Carey Schwartz inaugurates a yearly gift of contemporary art by emerging international artists to be exhibited in areas around the Brandeis campus with high student and public traffic. The first gift includes artists Jim Dingilian, Ori Gersht, Shai Kremer, Gillian Laub, Lorrain O’Grady, and Christian Xatrec.

“This gift is especially meaningful because it is intended to be enjoyed by the highest number of students and visitors possible,” Rush said. He added that they are prepared to deal with the security concerns involved with such an open display due to the museum’s strong tradition of sharing works from its collection with the greater Brandeis community. There is a plan to create an “art guide” for students and visitors to direct them to the works of art around the campus.

Other significant gifts were recently received from Boston collectors Joan and David Genser and from Rose Board of Overseers’ members including Jonathan Novak, Marlene Persky and Gerald Fineberg. The Genser gift is a large multimedia work on handmade paper by James Rosenquist, “Space Dust,” from 1989. The Rose owns several important paintings by Rosenquist. Jonathan Novak has donated a series of unique ink on paper works by Robert Motherwell from 1965 called “The Lyric Suite” plus a bronze sculpture by Joel Shapiro from 1992. Marlene Persky, chair of the Rose’s collections committee, has given a photograph by Vic Muniz and Gerald Fineberg donated two drawings by Marcel Dzuma.

“This has been an amazing year for the Rose collection,” says Rush. We have doubled our acquisitions endowment and now received all these gifts. This places us in the forefront of museums collecting modern and contemporary art.”

The Rose’s collection of more than 6,000 objects is renowned. In addition to major works of 20th century European and American modernism, the Rose’s Abstract Expressionist and Post-War American and Pop holdings are the finest in the region with major works by Andy Warhol, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, Al Held, Alfred Jensen, Alex Katz, Morris Louis, Larry Rivers, Helen Frankenthaler, Lawrence Poons, Jim Dine, James Rosenquist, Tom Wesselmann, Kenneth Noland, Philip Guston, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, and Adolph Gottlieb, among many others.
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