NEW YORK, NY.- The Museum of Modern Art announced the publication of Oasis in the City: The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden at The Museum of Modern Art, to be released on October 23 in the United States and Canada and on November 6 in the rest of the world. Commissioned by The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art, the richly illustrated publication celebrates the 80-year history of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, which has held a special place in the hearts of artists, museumgoers, New Yorkers, and visitors from around the world since its opening in 1939. It is edited by Peter Reed, Senior Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs, and Romy Silver-Kohn, Research Assistant, with contributions by Reed and Silver-Kohn, as well as Ann Temkin, The Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture, and Quentin Bajac, The Joel and Anne Ehrenkranz Chief Curator of Photography. In addition to behind-the-scenes history, the publication debuts newly commissioned portfolios by eight prominent contemporary artists and photographers who were invited by Bajac to make new works with the Sculpture Garden as their subject: Tina Barney, Candida Höfer, Vera Lutter, Richard Pare, Thomas Struth, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Carrie Mae Weems, and James Welling. In their diversity, these images fully realize the richness of the subject, and demonstrate the manifold ways in which the Sculpture Garden continues to inspire its visitors today.

Oasis in the City pays tribute to the Sculpture Garden’s remarkable history through an introductory essay by Ann Temkin and Peter Reed that provides a chronological narrative of the design of the Sculpture Garden and the development of the Museum’s sculpture collection over the decades. Revolutionary from its inception, the Sculpture Garden launched the very concept of the garden as an outdoor gallery for changing installations. It has hosted exhibitions of sculpture, architecture, and design; been a venue for music, dance, and performance; served as a setting for social gatherings; and has been a site of protest. Featuring sculptures by Alexander Calder, structures by Buckminster Fuller and Marcel Breuer, performances by Yayoi Kusama, and many more, the publication highlights the diverse program of exhibitions, performances, music, and events that have taken place in the Sculpture Garden over the years, reflecting not only the experimental nature of the institution but also its significance in New York City’s cultural history.

The Sculpture Garden first opened to the public on May 10, 1939, as part of the Museum’s move to its permanent building at 11 West 53rd Street. Only a few years earlier, two townhouses belonging to John D. Rockefeller Sr. and John D. Rockefeller Jr. occupied the site. Enlarged for the opening by a last-minute loan of the adjoining property owned by the Rockefellers, the Sculpture Garden was announced in the Museum’s press release as “an oasis in the city.” Although the Sculpture Garden was initially intended as a place to show sculpture outdoors—during the first exhibition in the new building, Art in Our Time: Tenth Anniversary Exhibition, the Sculpture Garden featured more than 20 sculptures, including works in the collection by Gaston Lachaise, Aristide Maillol, Jacques Lipchitz, and Isamu Noguchi—it quickly became a vital part of New York’s urban life, serving as a respite from the crowds and skyscrapers that surround it, and a place to commune with major works of modern and contemporary art.

The Sculpture Garden is itself a work of art, named after Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, a revered enthusiast of modern art, whose passion, vision, and dynamism led her to found MoMA with Lillie P. Bliss and Mary Quinn Sullivan in 1929. After her death in 1948, her sons Nelson and David, along with their father, commissioned the architect and curator Philip Johnson to design an entirely new garden in her honor. The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden was unveiled in 1953, bearing little resemblance to the 1939 original. Though it has changed over the years, the Sculpture Garden we know today is largely based on Johnson’s design, a fitting tribute to Mrs. Rockefeller and her openness to the new and unfamiliar.

Oasis in the City also features short texts, as well as hundreds of archival photographs that capture the life of the Sculpture Garden since 1939, many of which are published here for the first time. These images reflect the diversity of programming and highlight some of the most unique moments in the Sculpture Garden’s history, including the transformation of the Sculpture Garden during World War II into a canteen for servicemen; a Ridgepole ceremony honoring the Japanese workers who built the traditional Japanese Exhibition House in 1954, designed by the architect Junzo Yoshimura for the last presentation in the House in the Garden series; the self-destruction of Jean Tinguely’s 1960 work Homage to New York: A Self-Constructing and Self-Destroying Work of Art, a monumental kinetic sculpture that eventually broke down and started a fire; the beginnings of the Jazz in the Garden series, which included some of the most famous figures in jazz, including Lee Konitz, Bill Evans, Max Roach, and Freddie Hubbard; and the historic first live use of a synthesizer as a performance instrument in 1969, featuring four modular synthesizers designed by Robert Moog, which was attended by over 4,000 people. The publication also celebrates the Sculpture Garden’s place in popular culture, and its depictions in television shows like Sesame Street, specials like Gene Kelly in New York, New York, and movies like Manhattan.

Oasis in the City: The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden at The Museum of Modern Art is published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and will be available at MoMA stores and online at store.moma.org. Hardcover, $175/£125. 284 pages, 300 illustrations. ISBN: 978-0-87070-907-4. Distributed to the trade through ARTBOOK|D.A.P. in the United States and Canada and through Thames & Hudson outside the United States and Canada.