EXHIBITIONS BY YEAR
MoMA Staff
Artists
New York Times Review of the exhibition
PUBLISHED
10 May 1985
ART: A SHOW OF WORKS GIVEN BY PHILIP JOHNSON
By John RUSSELL
''PHILIP JOHNSON: Selected Gifts'' at the Museum of Modern Art is a fascinating and, on at least one count, a provocative affair. It consists of 40 paintings and sculptures by 31 artists, all given to the museum by Mr. Johnson since 1942. The roster of artists includes some - Jasper Johns, Frank Stella and Neil Jenney among them - of whom Mr. Johnson has been a longtime champion. But it also includes many to whom he is not known to have a strong private commitment - Yves Klein, for instance, and Arman, Lucas Samaras, Jim Dine, Agnes Martin, Tom Wesselmann and others. A close look at the checklist will also reveal to what an extent the donor made sure that the Modern Museum got good paintings by the Abstract Expressionists at a time when not everyone thought of them as indispensable. There was work to be done for Mark Rothko and Bradley Walker Tomlin in 1952, Philip Guston in 1956, Adolph Gottlieb in 1958 and Barnett Newman in 1959, and Philip Johnson went ahead and did it.
New York Times • Arts • page 24 • 1,423 words