DONATION OF FOURTEEN WORKS BY NINE ARTISTS INCLUDES PAINTINGS BY PICASSO, BRAQUE, BONNARD, MIRÓ, AND LéGER
November 25, 1996......Ronald S. Lauder, Chairman of
the Board of The Museum of Modern Art, announced today that the Museum has
received a major bequest from the estate of the late Florene May
Schoenborn. The gift consists of fourteen important works by artists
including Pablo Picasso, Pierre Bonnard, Fernand Léger, Georges
Braque, Alberto Giacometti, and Joan Miró.
Glenn D. Lowry,
Director, The Museum of Modern Art, said, "We are thrilled with this
important bequest. Mrs. Schoenborn, a longtime MoMA benefactor and Life
Trustee, has left us a generous legacy of superb works that greatly enrich
the scope and breadth of our collection."
During her lifetime, Mrs.
Schoenborn donated The Moroccan Garden (1912) and The
Moroccans (1915) by Henri Matisse directly to the Museum. She gave the
Museum three other superb Matisse paintings–
Woman on a High Stool
(1914), Artist and Goldfish (1914), and Variation on a Still Life
by De Heem (1915)—but retained possession of them until her death;
they now officially become the property of MoMA. All five appeared in the
Museum's 1992 exhibition Henri Matisse: A Retrospective. In
recognition of her generosity, the room devoted to Matisse in the Museum's
permanent collection galleries was named the Florene May Schoenborn Gallery
in 1986.
In addition to the Matisse paintings, the Museum is now adding
fourteen major works from Mrs. Schoenborn to its permanent collection.
Among these are Picasso's Woman Plaiting Her Hair (1906) and
Woman with Pears (1909); Nude in Bathroom (1932) by Bonnard;
The City (1919) by Léger; and Standing Figure (c.
1949), a unique bronze cast by Giacometti.
Woman Plaiting Her
Hair is a masterpiece of Picasso's so-called Iberian period, while
Woman with Pears is arguably the greatest of the artist's early
Cubist pictures from the crucial summer at Horta de Ebro, Spain, in 1909,
according to William Rubin, Director Emeritus, Department of Painting and
Sculpture. He also characterized Nude in Bathroom as "arguably the
finest painting Bonnard ever made."
Agnes Gund, President of The Museum
of Modern Art, said, "Florene May Schoenborn was a great star in the
firmament of the Modern's collection. The gifts she gave and the longtime
interest she had in the Museum were wonderful. Also special was her
relationship with Bill Rubin. I feel very privileged to have known
her."
The bulk of Mrs. Schoenborn's bequest was divided between MoMA and
New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, which received eighteen paintings
and sculptures. The Art Institute of Chicago and the St. Louis Art Museum
also received works from the estate.
"The Schoenborn collection was
surely the single greatest collection of twentieth-century masterworks
formed in the United States since World War II," said Mr. Rubin. "As a New
Yorker, I could not be happier with the division of these pictures in a way
that makes the city's two most important museums much stronger."
Mrs.
Schoenborn, who died in August 1995, became a MoMA Trustee in 1953 and
served on the drawing and program committees. She was also a founding
member of the Museum's International Council and over the years donated
many significant paintings, drawings, sculptures, and prints to MoMA's
permanent collection. Many of the paintings bequeathed to MoMA were
included in the Museum's 1965 exhibition The School of Paris: Paintings
from the Florene May Schoenborn and Samuel A. Marx Collection. Mr.
Marx, a Chicago architect who died in 1964, was Mrs. Schoenborn's second
husband. Her third husband, real estate developer Wolfgang Schoenborn, died
in 1986.
"Especially in combination with her previous gifts of Matisse
masterworks, this generous bequest places Mrs. Schoenborn in the ranks of
this Museum's most illustrious benefactors," said Kirk Varnedoe, Chief
Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture. "She will always be
remembered here for her great discernment and public-spirited
kindness."
For further information contact John Wolfe, Director of
Communications, 212/708–9747.
