Virtual ConversationPepe Karmel and Lynn Gumpert on Berthe Weill Wednesday, July 6, 7 pm EDT Watch Live
Presented by 192 Books and Paula Cooper Gallery, this live virtual event will celebrate the newly translated memoir of Berthe Weill, a provocative Parisian art dealer at the heart of the twentieth-century art world. Lynn Gumpert (Director, Grey Art Gallery) will join Pepe Karmel(Associate Professor of Art History, New York University) to discuss Weill’s Pow! Right in the Eye! Thirty Years behind the Scenes of Modern French Painting (University of Chicago Press, June 2022).
The event will be streamed directly on PCG Studioat 7 pm EDT. There is no login or RSVP required. A recording will be archived and posted shortly after.
Installation image of Mostly New: Selections from the NYU Art Collection. Photo by Nicholas Papananias, courtesy Grey Art Gallery, NYU
Mostly New: Selections from the NYU Art CollectionNow on view at New York University’s Grey Art Gallery through June 17, 2022The Grey Art Gallery at New York University is pleased to present Mostly New: Selections from the NYU Art Collection, the museum’s first exhibition since it closed in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Curated by the Grey’s Lynn Gumpert and Michèle Wong, the exhibition presents a compelling sampling of the New York University Art Collection, with more than 90 artworks by nearly 60 artists.
Mostly New highlights one of the NYU Art Collection’s strongest components—modern American art from the 1940s to the present, particularly paintings and prints by artists who lived and worked in the rich cultural landscape of downtown New York City. Figurative works by luminaries like Keith Haring and Andy Warhol introduce viewers to other influential figures of the downtown arts scene in the 1980s, such as dancers Bill T. Jones and Jock Soto. Work by artist Donald Baechler, who emerged in the ’80s as part of the East Village creative community alongside the likes of Warhol and Haring, reveals the artist’s interest in formal issues of line, shape, and color. Likewise, Brooklyn-based artist Deborah Kass explores pop culture as it intersects with art history. A late painting by Grace Hartigan, an influential member of the New York School, shows how the artist blended her signature Abstract Expressionist sensibility with a renewed interest in the figure. Influenced by 1960s counterculture and life in her native California, work by Mary Heilmann presents an upbeat, eccentric view of geometric abstraction. While Glenn Ligon is best known for works comprising stenciled fragments of famous texts, a 2004 print presents a more abstract exploration of issues of identity and the Black experience. A rare portrait by photographer Adam Fuss commemorates art patrons Dr. James Cottrell and Joseph Lovett, who maintain vital friendships with artists whose work they collect.
The NYU Art Collection also boasts significant photography holdings. Brooklyn-born photographer Emil Cadoo, who eventually moved to Paris in hopes of escaping racism in the United States, combined images of human and botanical subjects with textured overlays that expressed the subject’s inner psyche. Photojournalist and Lower Manhattan resident Danny Lyon turned his camera toward large-scale demolition projects going on in the neighborhood in the late 1960s. Harry Callahan’s experimental prints represent an important juncture in the history of photography when the creative capacities of the camera were explored. Cindy Sherman assumes a variety of guises for her self-portraits, appropriating characters from well-known stories as well as art history. Like Sherman, drag performance artist and actor Ethyl Eichelberger donned the identities of influential historical figures, as seen in photos by Peter Hujar, a chronicler of downtown New York’s creative vanguard and queer communities during the 1970s and ’80s. Work by Japanese-born New York transplant Kenji Nakahashi reveals the abstract imagery in everyday settings, like city subway stations. Miwa Yanagi applies a more socially conscious eye to the world around her—her series Elevator Girls investigates gender norms for Japanese women in the late 1990s.
In line with the principles of the museum’s founder, Abby Weed Grey, the Grey Art Gallery also collects modern and contemporary art from the Middle East. Mostly New particularly highlights work by artists from Iran, where Mrs. Grey traveled eight times in the 1960s and ’70s. Parviz Tanavoli is one of Iran’s foremost sculptors and, through his close friendship with Abby Grey, helped shape the museum’s remarkable holdings. Like his sculptures, Tanavoli’s works on paper utilize motifs from Persian culture, including symbols of folklore and mysticism and objects found in bazaars. A 1965 work by Marcos Grigorian—a pioneering Iranian artist and professor at the University of Tehran—reflects the artist’s preoccupation with earth and mud as artistic medium, recalling the Iranian desert. Informed by Persian miniature painting, work by Tehran-born artist Shiva Ahmadi features mythical creatures and enthroned figures characterized by ornate patterns, rich textures, and vivid hues. Shahpour Pouyan’s reinterpretation of traditional Persian miniature painting is absent of all figures, drawing attention instead to the landscape and domestic settings. Having moved away from her native Iran as a young child, Samira Abbassy uses her work as a means of exploring her relationship to Iranian culture and broader issues of identity. A photograph by the Emirati-born artist Farah Al Qasimi—donated by the founder of the Sharjah-based Barjeel Art Foundation, who collaborated with the Grey on Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s–1980s (2020)—offers viewers a playful glimpse into life in the Persian Gulf. [Download Full Press Release]
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We ask that you postpone your visit to the museum, regardless of vaccination status, if:You have a fever or are experiencing COVID-19 symptoms.You’ve tested positive for COVID-19 within the past 14 days.You’ve had close contact with anyone who is confirmed or suspected of having COVID-19.You and everyone in your group, including children, must comply with the protocols described above. Noncompliance may result in removal from the building. Thank you for your cooperation.
Image descriptions, from top to bottom:
(1) A gallery with blonde wood floors and high white walls is decorated with paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures.
(2) A poster depicts the figure of a nude Black man covered head to toe in pictographs composed of thick red lines. The figure is posed with his backside to the viewer, his head turned so that his profile is visible to the viewer, and his legs and arms flung out widely. The rest of the poster is composed of black pictographs on a light background, causing the decorated figure and backdrop to merge. Small black text at the bottom of the poster reads, approximately from left to right: “Keith Haring: Into 84, 163 Mercer Street, New York City, Tony Shafrazi Gallery, 925-8732, 1984 Dec. 03, Jan. 07 (c) Keith Haring, Photo: Tseng Kwong Chi, Model: Choreographer: Bill T. Jones.”
(3) A grayscale photograph depicts two clocks sitting on a scale that rests on a tabletop. The left clock reads 12:04, and the right clock reads 12:15. The scale is balanced, implying that the two different times carry the same weight.
(4) A rectangular printed and painted page is worn and torn at the edges, stained brown with age. The page bears lines of Persian calligraphy, encased by a rectangular border. Within the border, alongside the calligraphy, is a colorfully painted scene of a handsome grey horse that walks with a gold birdcage on its back. Within the cage is a red-eyed, green-feathered bird that seems to swell beyond the confines of the gold bars.
Monday, October 19, 6:30 pm EDT Register Approaching the art world as a complex and mysterious space, this conversation will consider Roslyn Bernstein’s illustrious career as an art critic and professor of art journalism, focusing in particular on her long-form reviews of groundbreaking exhibitions at the Grey. In addition, it will address these crucial questions: How do artists in Europe, the U.S., Asia, the Middle East, and the Americas find space to live and work? How do they create and exhibit art in a politicized world where freedom is often limited? How do smaller museums and other art venues survive the economic pressures and competition in the art market?
Join Roslyn Bernstein (GSAS ’67, ’74), art critic, professor of art journalism, and author of the just-released Engaging Art: Essays and Interviews from Around the Globe, and Lynn Gumpert, director of NYU’s Grey Art Gallery, as they examine these under-the-radar subjects, illuminating the pains and pleasures of contemporary artistic production as well as the challenges faced today by artists, curators, and gallerists around the globe.
Presented by the NYU Alumni Association and Grey Art Gallery.
Accessibility Accommodations Please note this virtual event requires an internet connection and computer, tablet, or smartphone. It is a priority to make our events inclusive and accessible and New York University is pleased to provide accommodations for people with disabilities. Requests for events and services, such as live closed captioning or ASL interpretation, should be submitted to alumni.events@nyu.edu at least 72 hours in advance. This event will be closed captioned and posted on the NYU Alumni website after the event.
The Grey Art Gallery is temporarily closed. Please visit our website for all of our digital content.Join the conversation! @NYUGrey Facebook Instagram Twitter
Most of the Grey’s public programs are free of charge, made possible by our generous supporters. Please make a gift today to help us continue to provide engaging educational programs. Click here to make your gift online:
Image: Cover image of Engaging Art: Essays and Interviews from Around the Globe by Roslyn Bernstein, Mosaic mural by Anado McLauchlin, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Photo by Shael Shapiro
Left: Reuben Lorch-Miller, Red Modular Sculpture. 2015 Painted wood, 20 x 8 x 8 in.
Right: Joseph Burwell, The Western Module. 2019 Mixed media installation, 7 x 6 x 4 ft.
Artists Joseph Burwell and Reuben Lorch-Miller join Lynn Gumpert, director of NYU’s Grey Art Gallery, for a wide-ranging conversation focusing on their multimedia works—which range from painting, sculpture, printmaking, and installation. Both Burwell and Lorch-Miller also work as freelance art preparators installing exhibitions at the Grey and other museums citywide. As part of our new series Behind the Scenes at the Grey, they will discuss their approaches to artmaking. Q&A to follow.
Joseph Burwell currently lives and works in the Bronx. He is a multidisciplinary artist and educator with an MFA in Sculpture from Tulane University and an MFA in Painting from Hunter College. A NYFA fellow in Drawing/Printmaking/Book Arts in 2011, Burwell has held residencies at Cooper Union and in the PS 122 Project Studio Program, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace Program, and the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop Studio Immersion Project. He currently teaches in the Graduate Communications Design Program at Pratt Institute and exhibits his work with Miyako Yoshinaga in New York and ADA Gallery in Richmond, VA.
Reuben Lorch-Miller is a Brooklyn-based artist and educator. His studio practice encompasses sculpture, collage, photography, and artist books. An active visual artist for over twenty-five years, he has been working as an arts educator with children and adults for the past eight years. He holds an MFA in New Practices from San Francisco State University, and he recently completed nine months’ training at the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care. His work is held in the collections of MoMA, The Tacoma Art Museum, SFMOMA, the Berkeley Art Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
Lynn Gumpert is director of NYU’s Grey Art Gallery, where she has overseen more than 70 exhibitions since her arrival in 1997. Previously she was an independent writer and curator, and organized shows in New York, Japan, and France. From 1980 to 1988 she was Curator and Senior Curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. She wrote the first major monograph on the French artist Christian Boltanski (Flammarion,1992) and has contributed essays to numerous publications.
Behind the Scenes at the Grey: Joseph Burwell and Reuben Lorch-Miller in Conversation with Lynn Gumpert, a Zoom Webinar is being recorded and will be made available captioned on our website.
Organized by the Grey Art Gallery, NYU
The Grey Art Gallery is temporarily closed. Please visit our website for all of our digital content.
Painting and Sculpture from the NYU Art Collection
April 22–July 16, 2008
Installation view of New York Cool: Painting and Sculpture from the NYU Art Collection, 2008
We announced last week that the Grey Art Gallery will remain closed until fall 2021, and will serve as a study center for NYU students in the interim. Though we will have to wait to welcome you back to the museum for new exhibitions, we are taking this opportunity to create digital content that further our mission to study art in its historical and sociocultural contexts. Our newest video feature looks back on our 2008 exhibition, New York Cool: Painting and Sculpture from the NYU Art Collection.
We’re happy to share this narrated tour of the Grey Art Gallery’s exhibition New York Cool,created by Saga Beus, graduate intern at the Grey Art Gallery who received an MA in NYU’s Museum Studies Program in May 2020.
Using both installation shots and images of individual works, she discusses how New York artists, many living downtown in Greenwich Village and, later, SoHo, fostered a new kind of personal sensibility in tandem with a seemingly impersonal geometric style. Allusive instead of expressive, understated rather than declarative, the painting and sculpture of this time set the stage for everything that followed. Works in the exhibition are drawn from the New York University Art Collection, which was founded in 1958 and is particularly rich in New York School works.
Focusing on the Grey Art Gallery’s exhibition Taking Shape: Abstract Art from the Arab World, 1950s–1980s
The Taking Shape NYU Student Writing Prize Competitions will award $250 each for the best short prose piece or poem written by an NYU undergraduate and graduate student in response to the Grey’s recent exhibition. Entrants are encouraged to work from images and documents available on the Grey’s website (see below for links). Two second-place winners will receive $100 each, and two honorable mentions $50 each. Each of the six winners will also receive a copy of the exhibition catalogue.
Co-sponsored by NYU’s Grey Art Gallery and Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies.
The submission deadline is Friday, October 16, 2020. Dr. Lucy Oakley, Head of Education and Programs at the Grey, will conduct a blind review of submissions and select the winners. The six winning entries will be published in The Grey Area, the Grey Art Gallery’s blog.
To enter, please follow these instructions carefully:
All submissions must be formatted as Microsoft Word documents, double spaced in 12-point Times New Roman font. Maximum length for prose pieces is 750 words, and maximum length for poems is three pages.
In the body of your email, be sure to include your full name, University ID (N# on the back of your valid ID card), NYU school and department or program, and anticipated date of graduation (do not include any of this information in your submission document).
UNDERGRADUATES: In the email’s subject line, write: “Taking Shape Writing Prize Submission: Undergrad.”
GRADUATE STUDENTS: In the email’s subject line, write: “Taking Shape Writing Prize Submission: Graduate Student.”
About the Exhibition
Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s–1980s was on view at NYU’s Grey Art Gallery from January 14 through March 13, 2020, closing early in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, the Grey posted on our website an image of every work in the exhibition, complete gallery texts, and numerous other features. (Continues on next page.)
Visit the Grey’s Taking Shape exhibition webpage for more on the exhibition and to access the following resources:
The Grey Art Gallery at New York University, which has been closed to the public since March 14, 2020, in accordance with NYU’s plan to limit the spread of COVID-19, will remain closed until fall of 2021. The exhibition Taking Shape: Abstraction in the Arab World, 1950s–1980s, which opened January 9, 2020, and was on view when the museum closed, will not reopen to the public. Rather, this fall, the upper level of the Grey Art Gallery will be transformed into a temporary study center for NYU students. Fortuitously, the Grey had previously decided to cancel all exhibitions for the 2020–21 academic year in order to implement infrastructure updates.
This is not the first time that this corner of the Silver Center for Arts and Science at NYU has functioned as study hall and art institution. From 1927 to 1943, the space housed both NYU’s South Study Hall and A. E. Gallatin’s Gallery (later Museum) of Living Art. The great-grandson of Albert Gallatin, who founded NYU in 1831, A. E. Gallatin (1881–1952) was an artist who also amassed an impressive collection of artworks, including paintings by Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, and Joan Miró. Decades after closing in 1943, the space reopened in 1975 as the Grey Art Gallery, caretaker of the New York University Art Collection and the Abby Weed Grey Collection of Modern Asian and Middle Eastern Art.
With its emphasis on experimentation and interpretation, the Grey—like Gallatin’s Museum of Living Art—serves as a laboratory for the exploration of art in its historical, cultural, and social contexts. The Gallery is pleased to provide NYU students with a place to study and participate in online classes during the pandemic. Grey Art Gallery Director Lynn Gumpert notes, “These are extremely difficult times on many levels, and we at the Grey are pleased to work with our colleagues to ensure the well-being of NYU students as they continue to adapt to new learning challenges.”
We look forward to welcoming students and visitors back to the museum during the 2021–22 academic year, when exhibitions resume. In the meantime, the Grey will remain active in the digital sphere, with virtual public programs and an array of online projects and resources that allow us to engage not only with the NYU community but also with audiences worldwide. We welcome you to explore our website at greyartgallery.nyu.edu to learn about our collections, future exhibitions, and digital projects.
About the Grey Art Gallery
The Grey Art Gallery is New York University’s fine arts museum, located on historic Washington Square Park in New York City’s Greenwich Village. It offers the NYU community and the general public a dynamic roster of engaging and thought-provoking exhibitions, all of them enriched by public programs. With its emphasis on experimentation and interpretation, and its focus on studying art in its historical and sociocultural contexts, the Grey serves as a museum-laboratory.
Exhibitions organized by the Grey have encompassed all the visual arts: painting, sculpture, drawing and printmaking, photography, architecture and decorative arts, video, film, and performance. In addition to producing its own exhibitions, which often travel to other venues in the United States and abroad, the Gallery hosts traveling shows that might not otherwise be seen in New York and produces scholarly publications that are distributed worldwide.
General Information
Grey Art Gallery, New York University
100 Washington Square East, New York, NY 10003
Tel: 212/998-6780, Fax: 212/995-4024
E-mail: greyartgallery@nyu.edu, Website: greyartgallery.nyu.edu
Taking Shape: New Perspectives on Arab Abstraction,
A Zoom Webinar SeriesUntil the late 1960s, 20th-century art from the Middle East and North Africa was greatly understudied. Yet by the turn of the millennium, scholars, museum curators, and collectors were actively engaged in creating a global art history. Among questions to be considered are: Why did modern artists from these regions choose to create nonfigurative works? How can we approach Arab abstraction without falling back on borrowed methodologies?
Taking Shape: New Perspectives on Arab Abstraction, A Zoom Webinar Series is being recorded and will be made available captioned on our website at a future date.
Co-organized by NYU’s Grey Art Gallery and Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, and co-sponsored by ArteEast. Offered in conjunction with the exhibition Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s–1980s, on view at NYU’s Grey Art Gallery in early 2020.
Session 1: The Barjeel Art Foundation and Taking Shape
Thursday, May 28, 12:00 pm EDT Register Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi, founder of the Barjeel Art Foundation, will discuss this independent, UAE–based initiative, which he established in 2009 to study, preserve, and exhibit modern art from the Arab world, and to foster critical conversations about regional modernisms. Suheyla Takesh, a curator at Barjeel and co-curator of Taking Shape, will discuss her role in organizing the exhibition, framing her investigation of modernism’s development in mid-20th century North Africa and West Asia within today’s rethinking of the canon of abstract art. Moderated by Lynn Gumpert, director of NYU’s Grey Art Gallery and co-curator of the exhibition.
Session 2: Arab Abstraction and Arabic Letterforms
Thursday, June 4, 6:00 pm EDT Register Iftikhar Dadi, Associate Professor of History of Art, Cornell University, and Nada Shabout, Professor of Art History, University of North Texas, will explore how the artists in Taking Shape “reterritorialized” the Arabic alphabet and made its aesthetic more accessible to the larger world, not only in detaching Arabic letterforms from Islamic calligraphy and religious history but also in liberating them from their semantic functions. In stripping Arabic letters of their former meanings, artists enabled them to signal modern (pan-)Arab identity and the decolonization of culture. Moderated by Pepe Karmel, Associate Professor of Art History, New York University.
Session 3: Modern Art in Algeria and Egypt
Thursday, June 18, 6:00 pm EDT Register
Between the 1950s and the 1980s, Arab countries were transformed through decolonization, the rise of nationalism, socialism, rapid industrialization, and wars and mass migrations. At the same time, artists were revitalizing their practices, finding inspiration in Arabic calligraphy, geometry and mathematics, and local topographies. Hannah Feldman, Associate Professor of Art History, Northwestern, will focus on abstract art in Algeria; and Alex Dika Seggerman, Assistant Professor of Islamic Art History, Rutgers University–Newark, on figurative art in Egypt. Moderated by Sarah-Neel Smith, Assistant Professor of Art History, Theory, and Criticism, Maryland Institute College of Art.
The Grey Art Gallery is temporarily closed. To view our current exhibition online, Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s-1980s, go to our website for a complete collection of images as well as the checklist and exhibit labels along with related content.
Join the conversation!
@NYUGrey
#TakingShapeNYU
#BarjeelArtFoundation
Installation view of Modernisms: Iranian, Turkish, and Indian Highlights from NYU’s Abby Weed Grey Collection, exhibition on view at the Grey Art Gallery, New York University, September 10-December 7, 2019. Photo: Nicholas Papananias
Join the NYU Grey Art Gallery’s Lynn Gumpert, Director, and Michèle Wong (STEINHARDT ’80), Associate Director | Head of Exhibitions and Collections, in a discussion and virtual tour of the highlights of NYU’s unparalleled and unique Abby Weed Grey Collection of Modern Asian and Middle Eastern Art.
Donated to NYU in 1974 by art collector and patron Abby Weed Grey, the collection includes some of the largest institutional holdings of Iranian, Indian, and Turkish modern art outside those countries. At a time when few Americans were attuned to contemporary art from the Middle East and Asia, Grey assembled a substantial collection of some 700 works.
This event is presented in collaboration with the NYU Office of Alumni Relations.
This webinar is presented in Eastern Time.
New York University is pleased to provide reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities. Requests for accommodations for events and services should be submitted to alumni.events@nyu.edu. Online events will be closed captioned and posted on the NYU Alumni website after the recording ends.
The Grey Art Gallery is temporarily closed. To view our current exhibition online, Taking Shape: Abstract Art from the Arab World, 1950s-1980s, go to our website for a complete collection of images as well as the checklist and exhibit labels along with related content.
Join the conversation!
@NYUGrey
#TakingShapeNYU
#BarjeelArtFoundation
Our colleagues at NYU have been doing extraordinary work on the frontlines of the COVID-19 crisis––generating cutting edge medical research on the virus’s migration, providing PPE from Shanghai to New York, tracking international political responsiveness to the virus, donating food in our New York City backyard, and ensuring widespread access to a wealth of free public-domain content drawn from distinguished libraries around the world. Here at the Grey Art Gallery, we are doing our part by finding ways for our community to continue learning and growing with us online.
We are regularly updating our blog, The Grey Area, with essays on artists and artworks featured in our exhibition Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s–1980s. In addition to posts on Abdallah Benanteur, Saloua Raouda Choucair, and Rachid Koraïchi, we recently published a biographical essay on Egyptian artist Menhat Helmy written by her grandson, Karim Zidan.
In Zidan’s words, Helmy was, “one of the first artists to capture the rapidly changing Egyptian State through the eyes of women—whether campaigning to vote, breastfeeding in newly erected outpatient clinics, or as prominent members of society working on par with their male counterparts. Her work during this time cemented her reputation as a pioneer of Egyptian printmaking.”
The University has established the NYU Emergency Relief Fund to help provide essential support to students with the greatest need across the university. Gifts to this fund will help students with the technology they require to continue their courses, support those who have lost wages, cover travel costs for those returning to their homes, or assist in meeting other time-sensitive needs such as food and housing.
Fields of Vision 