Modern and Contemporary Art
Jean-Michel Basquiat (American, 1960–1988), Untitled (Cadmium), 1984, oil, oil stick, and acrylic on canvas, purchase in honor of Lynne Browne, President of the Members Guild, 1992–1993, with funds from Alfred Austell Thornton in memory of Leila Austell Thornton and Albert Edward Thornton., Sr., and Sarah Miller Venable and William Hoyt Venable, 1993.3.
The Modern and Contemporary Art collection encompasses art from 1945 to the present, including artworks in all media and from diverse geographic locations and cultures, and currently comprises more than 3,000 works of art, including more than 400 paintings, 700 drawings, 1,600 prints, 250 sculptures, and 20 video and new media.
It provides a broad overview of the art of our time with outstanding examples of work by definitive artists who emerged in the postwar era; midcareer artists who have expanded and challenged the canon since the early 2000s; and emerging artists whose influential work suggests new directions for the future.
Wieland Family Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art
Explore the Modern and Contemporary Art Collection
Postwar Abstraction
The High includes fine examples of Abstract Expressionism by Mark Rothko, David Smith, Adolph Gottlieb, and Philip Guston, among others. As painting and sculpture moved away from Abstract Expressionism in the 1960s, the term “post-painterly abstraction” or “systemic abstraction” was used to describe hard-edged, geometric painting that challenged the highly subjective mode of painting and its expressive ambitions. The collection also includes works by Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Mangold, Frank Stella, and Dorothea Rockburne.
1970s–1990s
Ambitious scale and emerging art vocabularies came to the collection in the 1980s and 1990s with the acquisition of works by Richard Deacon, Sol LeWitt, Jackie Ferrara, Michael Heizer, Robert Morris, Jackie Winsor, and Frank Stella. By the 1990s, works addressing multiculturalism, neo-expressionism, and abstraction began to form important areas of strength, as well as a major gift of twenty-five works from Lenore and Burton Gold and multiple acquisitions of works by Radcliffe Bailey, Sean Scully, Ellsworth Kelly, Gerhard Richter, and others, establishing monographic concentrations in the collection.
Twenty-First-Century Art
Contemporary painters embrace “artistic pluralism,” which encourages diversity in artistic intention and style across media and disciplines, reflecting attitudes and influences informed by shifting transcultural exchanges. Highlights include major works by Amoako Boafo, Teresita Fernández, Dominique Fung, Kudzanai-Violet Hwami, Tomashi Jackson, Chantal Joffe, Rashid Johnson, Alex Katz, KAWS, Eddie Martinez, Julie Mehretu, Laura Owens, Ebony G. Patterson, Salman Toor, Jamian Juliano-Villani, Kara Walker, Mary Weatherford, and Kehinde Wiley, among many others.
Drawings
Often more intimate than other kinds of art in both scale and the physical marks they contain, contemporary drawings frequently challenge established notions of what a drawing looks like and its proximity to the “hand” of the artist. The collection includes fine examples by Terry Adkins, Benny Andrews, Romare Bearden, Beverly Buchanan, Lee Bontecou, Eva Hesse, Willem de Kooning, Hans Hofmann, Jim Hodges, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Jacob Lawrence, Whitfield Lovell, Ellsworth Kelly, Pavel Tchelitchew, Richard Tuttle, Al Taylor, Ray Yoshida, H. C. Westermann, Charles White, and Jack Whitten, among many others.
Prints and Portfolios
Prints are the largest category in the High’s Modern and Contemporary Art collection, numbering more than 1,600 individual impressions and ranging across generations, styles, and techniques. Prints in the collection are predominantly American, ranging from the postwar period to the present.
Video Art and Media
The High’s collection of video and new media was established in the 1970s with a small group of works by Robert Smithson, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Peter Campus, and William Wegman and later complemented with works by Janet Biggs, William Kentridge, and Jefferson Pinder. Recent acquisitions include works by Paul Stephen Benjamin, Ericka Beckman, Andrea Galvani, Arthur Jafa, Won Ju Lim, Rodney McMillian, Borna Sammak, Shirin Neshat, and Jaye Rhee.
Installation
Contemporary installation art, or environmental art, grew rapidly in the 1990s when artists combined light, projection, sound, and nontraditional objects and materials to create immersive multimedia environments. Installation art highlights audience experience—both a viewer’s physical relationship to the art and the emotional or sensory effects it provokes. The collection includes installations by Sarah Sze, Carl Andre, Ericka Beckman, Houston Conwill, Michael Heizer, Kara Walker, Alfredo Jaar, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Judy Pfaff, and Kiki Smith.
African American Artists
African American art became an important focus of the High’s collection in the 1990s with the acquisition of works by Terry Adkins, Radcliffe Bailey, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Robert Colescott, Sam Gilliam, Faith Ringgold, Lorna Simpson, Kara Walker, and others. From artists of the Harlem Renaissance to the Black Arts movement to those working today within the global milieu of the African diaspora, artists of African descent have fundamentally altered the ways we perceive race, identity, and cultural hybridity.
