NEW YORK, NY.- Marlborough Gallery announces that Philadelphia Cornucopia, Red Grooms’ renowned 1982 sculpto-pictorama, is being shown for the first time in nearly 30 years as part of the exhibition Happiness, Liberty, Life? American Art and Politics at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Philadelphia Cornucopia was commissioned by the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia for the city’s tri-centennial celebration in 1982, following the artist’s groundbreaking 1977 exhibition in New York City: Ruckus Manhattan. Although some of the original elements have been lost, after a six-year restoration effort the installation will feature George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson. When Philadelphia Cornucopia was first shown at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, the 2,000 sq. ft. sculpto-pictorama made such a strong impact on the public that a small group of enthusiasts were able to raise the funds to acquire the work in order to donate it to the city of Philadelphia. The work was on display at the old Philadelphia Visitor Center from 1982 to 1986 and at 30th Street Station from 1987 to 1989. In 2010 Philadelphia Cornucopia was given to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts with the hope that it could be restored and displayed once again.

The Brooks Museum of Art in Memphis, Tennessee is currently preparing an important survey exhibition on the work of the artist for its centennial celebration titled Red Grooms: Traveling Correspondent. The exhibition, which will open on October 15, 2016 and remain on view through January 8, 2017, will include seminal works by Grooms from 1961 to 2015. Concurrent with the Brooks Museum exhibition, the Hudson River Museum will also organize a solo exhibition on the work of Grooms displaying an array of iconic and varied works, and will showcase a new large sculpto-pictorama depicting Abraham Lincoln visiting Peekskill, New York by train.

Red Grooms was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1937 and has lived and worked in New York since 1957. Grooms’ art has been the subject of numerous important exhibitions, among them: the renowned exhibition in New York City, Ruckus Manhattan, which attracted over 50,000 visitors in 1977; a retrospective at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia in 1985 that traveled to the Denver Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and the Tennessee State Museum; a comprehensive retrospective in 1987 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; in 2000, the National Academy of Design in New York held an exhibition of Grooms’ graphic work that traveled to five other venues in the United States through 2004. Grooms has been honored with several important survey exhibitions: at the Yale University Art Gallery in 2013; the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center in 2013; the Hudson River Museum in 2007; and the Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, New York in 2005.

Grooms’ work can be found in over forty public institutions, including the Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Fort Worth Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Nagoya City Art Museum, Nagoya, Japan; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.