MoMA | Tag: Ad Reinhardt

Posts tagged ‘Ad Reinhardt’

January 30, 2015 | Artists, Collection & Exhibitions

Bread Tins and Thumbtacks: A Gallery Tour with The Forever Now Artist Michael Williams

Posted by Naomi Kuromiya, Administrative Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture

The artists featured in The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World all draw inspiration from a dizzying array of art-historical styles and processes. Two years ago, in conjunction with the exhibition Inventing Abstraction, 1910–1925, MoMA asked contemporary artists to discuss works in the show that they found compelling. We thought it might be fun and enlightening to revisit this approach and invite several artists from The Forever Now into the Museum’s collection galleries to see which works pique their interest.

The Ad Reinhardt You Never Knew

Posted by Jennifer Tobias, Librarian, Reader Services

Ad Reinhardt. Walt Nettie Walt Nettie Walt Nettie Merry Xmas Happy New Year 55! Best Wishes. Postcard, 1954. Courtesy Anna Reinhardt.

At the MoMA Library we recently unearthed an intriguing box of ephemera by artist Ad Reinhardt (1913-1967). The material was gifted to the Library by Walter and Nettie Wittman, who were friends of the artist. The letters, photographs, tear sheets, and some original commercial illustrations form a vignette of the artist’s professional and personal life, glimpsed from the perspective of Mr. Wittman, a lawyer residing in New Jersey.

Reinhardt and Walter Wittman met as students at Columbia University. We get a taste of their initial friendship with a 1931 notebook page documenting Reinhardt’s translation efforts in freshman German class (“In paradise what have I to do win?”)