past exhibitions

Dual Vision: The Simona and Jerome Chazen Collection

May 26, 2005 - September 11, 2005

Over the course of nearly four decades, Jerome and Simona Chazen have assembled an art collection that ranges from landmark modernist painters to sculptors in bronze, glass and clay. The exhibition Dual Vision: The Simona and Jerome Chazen Collection presents to the public for the first time 98 masterpieces selected from this important assemblage.

The exhibition celebrates a major gift of glass and ceramics from the Chazens for the Museum's permanent collection from two of the Museum's most dedicated supporters. Jerome Chazen, chairman emeritus, is the head of the Building Campaign for the new museum building at Two Columbus Circle, and Simona Chazen is co-chair of the Museum's Collections Committee.

Outstanding for its quality, breadth, and depth, the Chazen Collection celebrates art across genre boundaries, encompassing a wide range of important works by leading artists of the 20th century and today. Common to all works in the collection is the artists' imaginative engagement with materials and techniques as they pushed the perceived boundaries of their fields and explored new forms of creative expression.

Exhibition highlights include paintings by Roy Lichtenstein, Milton Avery, and Jean Dubuffet, shown alongside masterworks of glass by William Morris, Mary Shaffer and Klaus Moje, and ceramic sculptures by Rudy Autio and Sir Anthony Caro.

The exhibition is accompanied by a 200-page catalogue which includes 103 full-color illustrations, artist biographies, an interview with the Chazens by MAD Chief Curator David McFadden, essays by MAD Curator Ursula Ilse-Neuman, MAD Assistant Curator Jennifer Scanlan, and Russell Panczenko, Director of the Chazen Museum of Art in Madison, Wisconsin.

Funded in part by HSBC Bank USA, N.A. Domestic Private Bank, individual donors, and the Collectors Circle.
Left:
Michael Lucero, Seated Man with Heart on Face/Ohr Hair (Pre-Columbus), 1991
Hand-built earthenware with glazes
19 x 10 x 10 in.

Right:
Sergei Isupov, To Keep in Touch, 2000
Porcelain
18 x 16 1/2 x 10 in.

Background:
Frank Stella, Double Scramble, 1978
Liquitex on canvas
69 1/4 x 1381/4 in.
©2004 Frank Stella/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Jim Dine, Venusberg, 1988
Painted bronze
72 x 38 1/2 x 27 in.
© 2004 Jim Dine/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo: David Behl