Living for Art: The Dorothy & Herbert Vogel Collection

September 24, 2010 – January 2, 2011

This exhibition will feature 50 gifts of Minimal and Conceptual art the Museum recently received as part of the National Gallery of Art’s Fifty Works for Fifty States initiative, for which MAM was the sole New Jersey state recipient.  With the assistance of the National Gallery of Art, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, lifelong collectors Dorothy and Herbert Vogel launched a national gifts program distributing 2,500 works from the Vogels’ collection of contemporary art throughout the nation, with 50 works going to a selected art institution in each of the 50 states.

The best-known aspects of the Vogel Collection are minimal and conceptual art, but these donations also explore numerous directions of the post-minimalist period, including works of a figurative and expressionist nature. Primarily a collection of drawings, the 2,500 Vogel donations also include paintings, sculptures, photographs, and prints by more than 170 contemporary artists, mainly working in the United States.  MAM’s collection includes works by Stephen Antonakos (b. 1926), Will Barnet (b. 1911), Robert Barry (b. 1936), Lynda Benglis (b. 1941), Bill Jensen (b. 1945), Edda Renouf (b. 1943), and Richard Tuttle (b. 1941). At MAM, this exhibition will explore the themes of philanthropy and collecting.

Coming in 2011

Robert Mapplethorpe Flowers: Selections from the J.P. Morgan Chase Collection

February 4 - July 17, 2011

This installation will feature 10-15 photographs that exemplify the same sleek precision, studied composition, and classically meticulous approach of Mapplethorpe to all of his subjects, whether flowers, female nudes, black men, or S & M scenarios. While he objectified humans, flowers took on a human aspect, endowed with organic form, suggestive character, and personality.

Will Barnet: A Centennial Celebration

February 4 – July 17, 2011

Barnet's highly original recent work builds upon the foundation of his Indian Space work of the 1950s, which is based upon the Native American–inspired integration of organic and geometric pictograph forms within a flat, seamless space. These works were begun in 2003 and were exhibited at the Montclair Art Museum in 2007. Barnet redeveloped ideas that he never completed during his shift from abstraction to figurative work in the 1960s. Barnet’s unusual combinations of subtly painted, imaginary figurative imagery are enhanced by his new vision of color and special feeling, demonstrating his continuous capacity for reinvention and new perspectives as he nears 100. The exhibition will feature 10–15 works done since his 2007 show at MAM.

Warhol and Cars: American Icons

March 6 – June 19, 2011

This exhibition will highlight the Montclair Art Museum’s pivotal but little known early silk Twelve Cadillacs (1962) within the context of 35–40 other works on loan from the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. For the first time, Warhol’s enduring fascination with automotive vehicles as products of American consumer society will be examined in this survey of drawings, paintings, prints, photographs, and related archival documents spanning his career from 1946 to 1985.

One of his earliest silk screen paintings, Twelve Cadillacs was part of a largely unknown group of nine Warhol car paintings published in the November 1962 issue of Harper's Bazaar. The accompanying article opened with a poetic homage to the machine and stated that Warhol was commissioned by the magazine to make a visual commentary on the phenomenon of the iconic American motorcar. Twelve Cadillacs will be juxtaposed for the first time with potential source images, the original Cadillac drawing and other works on paper created in 1962, as well as the related Seven Cadillacs, which was also part of the Harper's Bazaar commission. These paintings are significant bridges between Warhol’s commercial work of the 1950s, his hand-painted canvases of 1960–62, and the photographic silkscreen canvases of 1962.

Also on view will be Warhol's virtually unknown, recently discovered maquette for a 1978 BMW racing car, as well as works from one of Warhol’s most important and poignant bodies of work, the Disasters series of relatively well-known photo–silk screen paintings, featuring singular and repeated images of gruesome car wrecks created from actual news photographs of accidents. Additionally, several related drawings and models will be on view from the Jean S. and Frederic A. Sharf Collection of American Automobile Art, a promised gift to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Warhol and Cars: American Icons has been designated an American Masterpiece by the NJ State Council on the Arts for the 2010-11 season. American Masterpieces is an initiative designed by the National Endowment for the Arts to introduce Americans to the best of our nation's cultural and artistic legacy. For more information about the American Masterpieces series, click here.