LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Los Angeles County Museum of Art announces the acquisition of ten artworks during the museum’s 29th annual Collectors Committee fundraiser. In one weekend LACMA’s Collectors Committee added diverse objects to the museum’s permanent collection, including Jean- Auguste Dominique Ingres’ Odalisque; contemporary works by American artist Roni Horn, Chinese artist Feng Mengbo, and Iranian artist Mitra Tabrizian; an 18th- century Virgin of Guadalupe by Antonio de Torres; a print by Pablo Picasso; and more.
Michael Govan, LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director, began the evening by announcing that Helen Pashgian’s installation, currently on view at LACMA through June 29 in the exhibition Helen Pashgian: Light Invisible, was acquired for the museum through a generous gift from trustee Carole Bayer Sager. The large- scale artwork is made up of twelve two-part columns framed out of molded acrylic; as viewers walk past, between, and around these forms, the sculpture creates an immersive viewing experience that changes based on one’s perspective. Sager, a trustee since 2009, also acquired Barbara Kruger’s Untitled (Shafted), in 2011.
“I’m very proud to contribute to the acquisition of monumental art by monumentally important women artists in Los Angeles,” said Carole Bayer Sager. “Helen Pashgian’s installation was created especially for this presentation at LACMA, and I am glad to say that it will now remain with LACMA.”
“Carole Bayer Sager’s generous gift was a wonderful way to start the Collectors Committee Gala, and her commitment to LACMA’s collection befits the spirit of Collectors Committee’s 29-year history,” said Govan. “The good news kept coming after that, with the acquisition of all nine artworks that were proposed by LACMA’s curators. Once again I am grateful to the many new and returning Collectors Committee members; to trustee Ann Colgin, Collectors Committee Chair; and to trustee Lynda Resnick, Acquisitions Committee Chair—all of whom show generosity and passion toward LACMA’s mission to share great works of art with the public.”
Collectors Committee Weekend is one of the museum’s most significant fundraising events of the year and has played an essential role in acquiring important works of art for every area of its encyclopedic collection. Throughout its 29-year history, this event has made 202 acquisitions through donations totaling more than $32 million. Including Sager’s gift, more than $4.1 million was raised toward acquisitions in a single weekend, breaking records for the event. 87 couples joined Collectors Committee 2014, including 23 new members. For the sixth consecutive year, LACMA Trustee Ann Colgin led the weekend efforts as Chair of Collectors Committee. LACMA Trustee Lynda Resnick serves as the Acquisitions Committee Chair. The event is generously sponsored by J.P. Morgan Private Bank.
The 2014 festivities began on Friday, April 25, with exclusive dinners for Collectors Committee members in the homes of seven LACMA trustees, each prepared by celebrity chefs and paired with wines presented by renowned California vintners (see below for full list). On Saturday morning, LACMA curators presented artworks proposed for acquisition; at the annual Collectors Committee Gala on Saturday night, members enjoyed a dinner prepared by chef Joachim Splichal (Patina Group) and voted on which artworks to acquire. Two artworks were generously purchased for the museum before voting began: Mitra Tabrizian’s Tehran 2006, a gift of the Buddy Taub Foundation, Jill and Dennis A. Roach, Directors; and Antonio de Torres’ Virgin of Guadalupe, a gift of LACMA trustee Kelvin Davis. Over the course of the evening, trustee Lynda Resnick and her husband, Stewart, purchased two artworks: Nancy Grossman’s No Name (1968) and a ninth-century Japanese Pair of Guardian Animals, the latter a promised gift. By the end of the night, all nine artworks presented by LACMA curators entered the collection.
“Collectors Committee Weekend is a celebration of LACMA’s timeless artworks, and I am delighted that these new acquisitions will further strengthen the museum’s collection,” said Ann Colgin. “I am grateful to the Friday night hosts, the brilliant chefs and vintners, the auction donors, and to the Collectors Committee members who participated in this two-day celebration. This weekend would not be possible without the support of all these individuals.”
Funds for the acquisitions were raised by Collectors Committee membership dues, with additional funds provided by individual members (noted below); prior to voting, another $800,000 was raised by a live auction featuring artworks, trips, and one-of-a-kind experiences. LACMA Trustee Viveca Paulin-Ferrell served as auctioneer.
Acquired Artworks Artworks acquired through the 2014 Collectors Committee include:
Untitled (“The sensation of satisfaction at having outstared a baby.”) (2013), by Roni Horn, is a form of solid glass. Rendered in vibrant lavender hues, the 3,300-pound sculpture changes according to the conditions and reflections brought on by the presence of natural light. This is the first Roni Horn work to enter LACMA’s collection as well as the first glass piece by Horn to be acquired by a Los Angeles museum. Gift of the 2014 Collectors Committee, with additional funds provided by Steve Tisch.
Jean–Auguste Dominique Ingres’ small reclining nude is an autograph reduction of the artist's celebrated 1815 Odalisque, a landmark in the painter's oeuvre and a milestone in the representation of the nude in Western painting. Throughout his long career Ingres often repeated his subjects, while altering their image, composition or style. This recently rediscovered painting is an important contribution to our knowledge of the artist and of his technique: As recently suggested by David Hockney in his discussion of Ingres's drawings, the artist may have used an optical device—such as a "camera lucida"—to reproduce the outline of his original composition. Its details however reveal the artist's hesitations, changes and additions that are evidenced in all the versions Ingres painted of the subject. Gift of the 2014 Collectors Committee.
Dating from the 9th century, the earliest known large-scale wood sculptures of a Pair of Guardian Lions. Each lion was carved from the same source, a sacred tree called shinboku. In Japanese art the nutmeg-yu wood from which they are carved was used for sculpture only between 750 and 900 AD. These powerful yet playful animals, which seem to speak to each other with their expressive, large heads, would have stood guard at the entrance to a Buddhist temple or Shinto shrine in the early Heian period (794- 1185). Promised gift of Lynda and Stewart Resnick through the 2014 Collectors Committee.
Bull and Picador (1952), a print by Pablo Picasso that depicts the dramatic moment of a bullfight when the picador stabs the mound of muscle on the bull's neck while, at the same time, the bull gouges the horse's side. The corrida, or bullfight, was a lifelong passion for Picasso and a seemingly ceaseless source of artistic inspiration in all media, but especially in his graphic work. Picasso began working with the master printer Roger Lacouriére in 1934, which marked the beginning of a radically new engagement with intaglio printmaking during which he experimented prodigiously, deploying traditional methods in unorthodox ways to produce many of his most technically complex and accomplished prints. It is a major achievement within Picasso’s graphic oeuvre and a work of utmost rarity. Gift of the 2014 Collectors Committee.
Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s extraordinary, nine-foot tall poster for the Scottish Musical Review (1896). Scotland's most renowned designer, Mackintosh has received international acclaim for his architecture and furniture design; his contributions to other media are not as well known. The poster features an elongated, androgynous figure conflated with an abstract, flowering Tree of Life, an image that would be a key component in the design of his most famous building, the Glasgow School of Art, designed at the same time as the poster. Only about ten examples of this poster are known to have survived. Gift of the 2014 Collectors Committee, with additional funds provided by Kitzia and Richard Goodman, J. Ben Bourgeois and Andrew Rhoda, Viveca Paulin-Ferrell and Will Ferrell, and Olivier and Zoe de Givenchy.
A striking painting of the iconic Virgin of Guadalupe by Antonio de Torres, one of the most important painters of the early 18th century in Mexico. This image of the famous wonder-making Virgin shows her surrounded by four roundels detailing her apparitions to the Indian Juan Diego. This emblematic painting of the "Queen of the Americas" bolsters LACMA's collection of Spanish colonial art and its commitment to Latin American art. Gift of Kelvin Davis through the 2014 Collectors Committee.
Chinese artist Feng Mengbo’s Long March: Restart (2008), a large-scale video installation considered to be one of the most iconic artworks created by a Chinese artist in the past thirty years. The piece combines humor, wit, and cynicism on historical moments in twentieth-century China: the Long March, a two-year military retreat in 1933—1935 by the Red Army that led to the rise of the Communist Party and the Open Door Policy after the Cultural Revolution as symbolized by the introduction of Coca- Cola in 1979. Long March: Restart is a “side-scroller” video game that is projected onto two facing walls at a life-size scale. The player moves along with the avatar of a digital Red Army soldier tossing cans of Coca-Cola with a soundtrack of revolutionary songs rendered in the style of vintage 8-bit gaming music. Purchased with funds provided by Jane and Marc Nathanson, Ann Colgin and Joe Wender, Mary and David Solomon, Carolyn and John Diemer, and Bryan Lourd through the 2014 Collectors Committee.
Nancy Grossman’s iconic No Name (1968), a meticulously crafted sculpture carved in found wood and encapsulated by a skin of black leather that was designed, cut, sewn, and tacked together by the artist herself. A cross between sculpture and assemblage, the artist’s leather head suggests strong ties to Surrealism and is part of the feminist movement of the late 1960s and ‘70s. This is the first Grossman piece to enter LACMA’s collection. Gift of Lynda and Stewart Resnick through the 2014 Collectors Committee.
Iranian artist Mitra Tabrizian’s photograph, Tehran 2006 (2006) is a metaphorical study of isolation, displacement, and social upheaval. Tabrizian’s fascination with contemporary Iranian cinema informs her photographic work, including this piece, which is photographed like a wide-angle shot in a film. Staged in a then-recently developed residential section in the northwestern area of Tehran, the setting evokes a society without a functioning infrastructure, where the directionless inhabitants are ironically juxtaposed with a billboard that reads: “We will continue [on] the path of the imam and martyrs of the Revolution.” Gift of the Buddy Taub Foundation, Jill and Dennis A. Roach, Directors, through the 2014 Collectors Committee.
