Release Date: September 1, 2006

Donated Works from Renowned Collection of Edward R. Broida
on View at the National Gallery of Art
through November 12, 2006

Philip Guston (1913 - 1980)
Rug, 1976
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Edward R. Broida

Washington, DC—In 2005 Los Angeles architect and real estate developer Edward R. Broida (1933-2006) gave the National Gallery of Art 62 modern and contemporary paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by 23 artists from his remarkable collection. Selections from the Collection of Edward R. Broida, on view in the East Building, August 24 through November 12, 2006, showcases 37 key paintings, sculptures, and drawings by Pierre Alechinsky (b. 1927), Jake Berthot (b. 1939), Vija Celmins (b. 1938), Dorothy Dehner (1901-1994), Jacob El Hanani (b. 1947), Philip Guston (1913-1980), Neil Jenney (b. 1945), Franz Kline (1910-1962), Willem de Kooning (1904-1997), Wolfgang Laib (b. 1950), Robert Morris (b. 1931), Claes Oldenburg (b. 1929), Susan Rothenberg (b. 1945), Joel Shapiro (b. 1941), and Christopher Wilmarth (1943-1987).

"Edward Broida had a talent for identifying the significant works of his time. His generous gift affords the National Gallery of Art the opportunity to share this vision with the nation as it enriches our holdings of modern and contemporary art," said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of art.

Highlights from the Exhibition

The exhibition opens with a group of works by Philip Guston, including Rug (1976), one of the first acquisitions Edward Broida made when he began his collection of modern and contemporary art in 1978. This painting remained an anchor point throughout his 30 years of collecting and is presented here along with seven other works by the New York artist. The collector was fascinated by the forceful expression of imagery like that of Rug, an outstanding work from Guston’s late period, when he moved away from the abstract style in which he had established his reputation and began to depict familiar objects and figures on large canvases in a heavy, comicbook style.

Best known for paintings and drawings of the night sky, Latvia-born artist Vija Celmins uses a range of artistic media to recreate various found objects and images. In Tulip Car #1 (1966), a painting with no visible horizon line or other indication of spatial depth, she meticulously replicates a famous black-and-white photograph from Pearl Harbor of a passenger slumped over the driver’s seat of a car riddled with bullet holes. Celmins also produced large trompe l’oeil sculptural reconstructions of real objects such as Pencil (1966) and Eraser (1967).

Celmins’ blown-up versions of everyday things recall the work of another artist in this exhibition, Claes Oldenburg, who experiments with size and medium by detatching everyday objects from their usual scale, materials, and functions. Standing Mitt with Ball, Half Scale, 6 Feet (1973) is an enormous adaptation of a catcher’s mitt, where the mitt is made of sheet metal and the ball is sculpted from laminated wood.

German artist Wolfgang Laib incorporates organic substances such as pollen, marble, milk, and rice in his works. Rice House (1988) is made of red sealing wax and wood and contains a symbolic meal of rice. It joins a related drawing given by Broida, to mark the first works by Laib to enter the National Gallery’s collection. The artist’s work evokes ancient and non-Western spiritual or religious practices and timeless rituals of hospitality. His elemental architectural forms are derived from archetypal domestic and ceremonial structures such as houses, tombs, and medieval reliquaries.

The Broida Gift

The Broida gift adds great depth to the Gallery’s holdings of works by Philip Guston and Vija Celmins, including exceptional examples from each phase of these artists’ careers. The donation also brings the Gallery its first sculptures by Wolfgang Laib and David Nash as well as its first works by Jake Berthot. As a group, the 62 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper comprising the Broida collection testify to the important historical legacy of abstraction and its continuing relationship with representation in the period after 1945.

General Information

The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden are at all times free to the public. They are located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, and are open Monday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. The Gallery is closed on December 25 and January 1. For information call (202) 737-4215 or the Telecommunications Device for the Deaf (TDD) at (202) 842-6176, or visit the Gallery's Web site at www.nga.gov.

Visitors will be asked to present all carried items for inspection upon entering the East and West Buildings. Checkrooms are free of charge and located at each entrance. Luggage and other oversized bags must be presented at the 4th Street entrances to the East or West Building to permit x-ray screening and must be deposited in the checkrooms at those entrances. For the safety of visitors and the works of art, nothing may be carried into the Gallery on a visitor's back. Any bag or other items that cannot be carried reasonably and safely in some other manner must be left in the checkrooms. Items larger than 17 x 26 inches cannot be accepted by the Gallery or its checkrooms.

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Donated Works from Renowned Collection of Edward R. Broida on View at the National Gallery of Art through November 12, 2006

Donated Works from Renowned Collection of Edward R. Broida
on View at the National Gallery of Art
through November 12, 2006