The Sun (Lowell, Massachusetts)
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News
July 18, 2009 Saturday
Lowell’s Whistler Museum scores coup with Gorky works
by Nancye Tuttle, The Sun, Lowell, Mass.
Jul. 18–LOWELL — The Whistler House Museum of Art has joined the big
leagues with its latest art acquisition.
A collection of 28 rarely or never-before-seen paintings, drawings and
one rare stone sculpture by artist Arshile Gorky are now on permanent
loan to the museum and will be unveiled in a gala exhibition this
September, it was announced this week.
The Armenian-born Gorky, who survived the genocide of his people by
the Ottoman Turks in the early 1900s, was a key figure in the American
modern-art movement, which flourished in New York in the mid-20th
century.
Known as the father of American abstract expressionism, he influenced
and befriended such modern masters as Jackson Pollock and Willem De
Kooning. His work hangs in
major museums around the world, including the Tate Modern in London
and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the
Guggenheim Museum, all in New York City.
And now this significant work — the Mina Boehm Metzger collection —
is at the Whistler House, after nearly five years of negotiations with
the anonymous, out-of-state donors, who had the collection in their
home.
Metzger, Gorky’s student, friend and patron, collected the works in
the 1930s in New York, when she studied with him and recognized his
genius.
Acquiring the works started simply with an e-mail, said Michael Lally,
Whistler House’s executive director.
"They contacted us, saying they understood we had a Gorky in our
permanent
collection and would we be interested in some other Gorkys," Lally
said.
(The Whistler House owns Gorky’s "Park Street Boston (1924)," which
the artist painted while living in Massachusetts in the 1920s. One of
few remaining Gorky works from that period in his life, it has been
exhibited by many museums and is part of a Gorky retrospective that
the Philadelphia Museum of Art will mount this fall.)
More e-mails and visits between Whistler staff and board and the
donors followed.
"They had contacted other museums, but we were the only museum they
contacted which said we’d exhibit the works, too. They wanted the
collection to be seen," said Lally.
Appraisals were made, contracts drawn up, and $35,000 Parker
Foundation grant procured to have the works cleaned and restored to
museum quality.
"The appraiser Linda Poras loved the collection and said it was a coup
for us and the city of Lowell to have it here," said Lally, referring
to the former director of the Brush Art Gallery.
Whistler House board member Sara Bogosian, who is of Armenian descent,
championed the project from the start and became especially
enthusiastic when she read a story about Gorky’s art in the Armenian
Mirror Spectator, a national publication.
"I’ve always loved art, promoted it and was interested in Armenian
artists. My father Marcos Mezian always talked about Gorky. Then I saw
a story in the Armenian Mirror Spectator about how some of his later
works were being sold in Paris for millions. I urged the board to
pursue this, since he is such an important figure and having the works
here would add to our reputation," she said.
Jim Dyment, exhibits and gallery manager, said it’s the most important
thing to happen to the Whistler House since Theodore Edson Parker
bequeathed his art collection to the museum over 100 years ago.
Refurbished, restored and under lock and key with an upgraded security
system, the collection is now appraised "well into the millions," said
Lally.
It will be unveiled in September in the exhibit Drawings and Paintings
by Arshile Gorky — Mina Boehm Metzger Collection in the Whistler’s
Parker Gallery. After the exhibit, it will be moved to a second-floor
gallery for permanent display.
Acquiring these works is a major coup for a museum like the Whistler
House, which has more traditional 19th- and early 20th-century works
in its permanent collection.
"It’s a little different for us adding more abstract work to the
collection," Lally said. "But we’ll be known now for having these
important Gorky works. It’s tremendous."
The acquisition couldn’t come at a better time for the Whistler House
either, with the retrospective opening in Philadelphia in October,
then traveling in 2010 to the Tate Modern in London and Museum of
Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.
But area art lovers needn’t travel that far this fall to see an
impressive array of Gorkys. They only need go to the Whistler House
Museum of Art on Worthen Street.
"It’s fabulous for us and the city of Lowell," said Lally. "We are
proud to care for and preserve these Gorkys for future generations and
we hope people will line up out the door and down the street to see
them."