Grants

Grant Recipients in 2002

biberman $15,000

Edward Biberman1904-1986

Note
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Location
Los Angeles, CA

$15,000 toward the acquisition of Conspiracy, c.1955, a painting by the artist for the museum’s permanent collection. Following his studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Biberman lived and established his career in Paris and New York City before settling in Los Angeles in 1936. Influenced by social realism, Biberman painted portraits and murals that increasingly reflected mid-century social and political concerns such as the Spanish Civil War and McCarthyism.

bluhm $15,000

Norman Bluhm1921-1999

Note
Denver Art Museum
Location
Denver, CO

$15,000 to help acquire an early painting by the artist for the museum’s permanent collection. Bluhm served as a pilot during World War II, afterwhich he abandoned his studies of architecture to pursue painting in both Paris and New York. An active member of the second generation abstract expressionist group, Bluhm also created work that, symetrically composed with volumous shapes of pinks and reds, references interior aspects of the body.

bubley $15,000

Esther Bubley1921-1998

Note
Estate of Esther Bubley
Location
Brooklyn, NY

$15,000 to inventory and rehouse work by the photographer, organized by Jean Bubley and archivist Tracy Schmid. Bubley was a leading photojournalist between the 1940s and the 1960s and worked for the United States government, Standard Oil, and magazines such as Life, Ladies Home Journal, and Look. Described by some as a quiet observer, Bubley captured many poignant and private moments of children, city life, and hospital environments as well as hauntingly striking photographs of oil rigs.

burckhardt $15,000

Rudy Burckhardt1914-1999

Note
Estate of Rudy Burckhardt
Location
New York, NY

$15,000 to catalogue and preserve paintings and photographs by the artist, organized by Yvonne Jacquette Burckhardt, Jennifer Jankauskas, and Corrine Nelson. Born in Basel, Switzerland, Burkhardt left medical school to pursue his interests in photography and filmmaking and in 1935 moved to New York. His signature photographs of the city’s architecture, barbershops, and crowds, as well as his portraits of seminal art figures, created a new perspective of New York and its artworld.

cherry $5,000

Herman Cherry1909-1992

Note
Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center
Location
East Hampton, NY

$5,000 toward Herman Cherry: Paintings on Paper, 1957, an exhibition and accompanying catalogue on the painter, organized by director Helen Harrison. Cherry painted with the W.P.A. Project in Los Angeles and was active in New York from the 1950s until 1992. Expressed through large shapes defined by soft edges, color was Cherry’s primary means of structuring his paintings, which are composed in such a way as to de-centralize the painting’s focus.

connell $10,000

Clyde Connell1901-1998

Note
Meadows Museum of Art at Centenary College
Location
Shreveport, LA

$10,000 toward the acquisition of eight works by the painter/sculptor for the museum’s permanent collection. Despite spending a large portion of her life in relative isolation and poverty near Lake Bistineau, Louisiana, Connell participated in both the Civil Rights Movement and the Women’s Movement and remained connected to the art world through annual trips to New York City. Her abstract paintings and sculptures reflect her deep connections to nature through the use of iconic shapes and colorful patterns.

delaney $20,000

Beauford Delaney1901-1979

Note
Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Location
Minneapolis, MN

$20,000 toward an exhibition on the painter together with a catalogue and related programs, organized by museum curator Patricia S. Canterbury. Delaney was born in Tennessee and trained as an artist in Boston during the 1920s. He painted portraits and urban scenes primarily in New York during the later years of the Harlem Renaissance, and beginning in the early 1960s painted abstractions in Paris where he resided for the rest of his life.

huebler $10,000

Douglas Huebler1924-1997

Note
Camden Arts Centre
Location
London, England

$10,000 toward Douglas Huebler, an exhibition on the photographer with a catalogue and related programs, organized by director Jenni Lomax and art historian and critic Mark Godfrey. Huebler was active in post-war American art and was involved in a variety of movements such as, abstract expressionism, minimalism, and most notably conceptually inspired photography. Many of his photographs document people participating in various activities. One of his most ambitious projects was the attempt to photograph everyone alive on the planet.

koerner $15,000

Henry Koerner1915-1991

Note
Carnegie Museum of Art
Location
Pittsburgh, PA

$15,000 to help acquire the 1948 painting It Isn’t the Heat, It’s the Humidity for the museum’s permanent collection. Born in Vienna, Koerner left Europe during the rise of Nazism and emigrated to the United States in 1939. Koerner’s figurative realist paintings are complicated by the use of multiple scales, distortion, and fantastic scenerios, such as the image of a magazine advertisement blown across a man’s face. The advertisement depicts a couple kissing and creates the circular illusion that the man is a woman kissing another man.

mendieta $25,000

Ana Mendieta1948-1985

Note
Whitney Museum of American Art
Location
New York, NY

$10,000 to host Ana Mendieta: A Retrospective, organized by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and overseen by Whitney curator Marla Prather. In addition to Mendieta’s better-known sculptures and photographs, this exhibition will feature several works never before included in museum exhibitions, including certain earth sculptures, large performance-related works on paper, bark carvings and Rupestrian etchings.

Ana Mendieta1948-1985

Note
Smithsonian Institution - Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Location
Washington, DC

$15,000 for Ana Mendieta: A Retrospective, a traveling exhibition on the artist with a monograph and related programs, organized by museum curator Olga M. Viso. Born in Cuba and raised in the United States, Mendieta made sculptures and earthworks based on mythic female forms, influenced by Cuban and Mexican spiritual traditions. Her “interventions” in nature included materials such as rock formations, tree trunks, roots, leaves, debris, sand, and water.

robinson $18,000

Ione Robinson1910-1989

Note
Mexican Cultural Institute of New York
Location
New York, NY

$18,000 for the conservation of photographs by the artist in preparation for an exhibition sponsored by the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York and the Instituto Cervantes, organized by grandson Christopher J. Dallet. Robinson worked in both New York and Mexico and was an assistant to Diego Rivera as well as a 1931 Guggenheim fellow. Concerned with the social and political strife of the Spanish Civil War and World War II, Robinson produced photographs and drawings that depict the difficult living conditions of orphaned Spanish children and refugees.

sinsabaugh $20,000

Art Sinsabaugh1924-1983

Note
Indiana University Art Museum - Indiana University
Location
Bloomington, IN

$20,000 toward the monograph that will accompany the retrospective exhibition American Horizons: The Photographs of Art Sinsabaugh, published by Hudson Hills Press, with contributions by guest curator Keith Davis and museum curator Nanette Esseck Brewer. Originally from New Jersey, Sinsabaugh lived and taught in the midwest at Chicago’s Institute of Design and the University of Illinois. His wide format photographs of the American landscape, both urban and rural, reveal the relationship between humanity and the land, evidenced in his images of sweeping horizons punctuated by bridges, silos, skyscrapers and highways.

smith $13,000

Leon Polk Smith1906-1996

Note
University of Iowa Museum of Art
Location
Iowa City, IA

$13,000 toward the acquisition of the 1946 painting Center Columns, Blue-Red for the museum’s permanent collection. Born in Oklahoma’s Indian Territory, Smith worked in New York and taught at various institutions, including the University of Georgia. Using canvases of various sizes and shapes, Smith painted hard-edged, abstract geometric forms defined by tangential lines in brilliant primary colors.

sugarman $10,000

George Sugarman1912-1999

Note
Estate of George Sugarman
Location
Novato, CA

$10,000 to document and catalogue the work of the sculptor/painter, organized by Peter Capurso and Arden Sugarman Eliopoulos. Sugarman lived and worked in New York and created large colorful sculptures, some of which exist as wall or floor pieces. Inspired by his early interest in the compositions of Chinese painting and Matisse, Sugarman produced rhythmical pieces made from jagged geometric forms that challenged the conventions of figure-based sculpture.

taylor $5,000

Al Taylor1948-1999

Note
Whitney Museum of American Art
Location
New York, NY

$5,000 to help acquire the 1998 sculptural work (12151115121): Counting Without Riggers for the museum’s permanent collection. Taylor was a New York-based artist who exhibited predominately in Europe. His imaginative and playful style is exemplified in work that explores multiple angles and viewpoints. Taylor saw his sculptures as three-dimensional drawings and used industrial materials such as inner tubes, plexi-glass and foamed plastic floats in his work.

thomas $15,000

Alma Woodsey Thomas1891-1978

Note
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Location
Philadelphia, PA

$15,000 toward the acquisition of a painting by the artist for the museum’s permanent collection. Thomas taught art for 36 years in Washington D.C. before retiring and devoting herself full-time to painting. Thomas’s interest in observed natural form and color field painting can be seen through her rhythmical use of various patterns, stripes, and concentric circles constructed from dabs of brightly colored pigment.

westermann $15,000

H.C. Westermann1922-1981

Note
David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art - University of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL

$15,000 toward the costs associated with establishing the H.C. Westermann Study Collection, organized by museum curator Richard Born and registrar Jennifer Widman. Trained as an artist in Chicago, Westermann ultimately settled in Connecticut and produced sculptural constructions and assemblages. His work interpretes social and historical events of the 1950s through the 1970s, combining woodworking and craftsmanship with a Dadaist sense of humor.

woodman $10,000

Francesca Woodman1958-1981

Note
Museum of Art - Rhode Island School of Design
Location
Providence, RI

$10,000 to help acquire one or two vintage photographs by the artist for the museum’s permanent collection. A graduate of RISD’s Bachelor of Fine Arts program, Woodman’s self-portraiture incorporates highly personal raw images in timeless, spare interiors. Her naked figure is often posed with mirrors, shells, masks, and other props.

Total: $251,000