50th Anniversary

More Stories from the Archives

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  The backstory on backstory50

  The production of backstory50 and the commemorative anniversary exhibitions we held this year was a huge team effort involving all of the members of the Neuberger Museum of Art staff. 

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  backstory50: Full Circle

  As we enter our last month of the 50th anniversary backstories, I find myself shifting from a celebration of the Museum’s rich and robust history to focus on its promising future.

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  backstory50: So, I won’t quit my day job …

  A poem ...

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  backstory50: Scholarship

  Over the last 50 years, the Neuberger has produced many, many catalogues featuring groundbreaking scholarship related to our special exhibitions. 

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  backstory50: Front of House

  So, you walk into the Neuberger and then what happens? Our Visitor Services and Security team are right there, to welcome you, and to make sure that your visit is safe and comfortable. 

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  backstory50: Lessons

  Many, many years ago, I had an intern who was just so smart. She was creative, thoughtful, and had wonderful ideas. But she wasn’t so good at listening. 

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  backstory50: Vote

  Vote

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  backstory50: Our work with kids

  Nearby the Neuberger is the Purchase College Children’s Center, which both of my kids attended. Periodically, teachers will bring the children by to explore our exhibitions.
  
  Our connection to kids is core to our mission as an academic museum. 

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  backstory50: Save the date for our next Yaseen Lecture

  I wrote to you in April about Helen and Leonard Yaseen, former residents of Larchmont who were among the inaugural members of the Board of the Friends of the Neuberger Museum of Art. 

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  backstory50: Richard Pettibone Paints the Rickey Collection

  Today, I reached into the archives to find one of my first backstory blog posts written in January 2019 when we were installing Miniaturizing Modernism: Richard Pettibone Paints the Rickey Collection.

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  backstory50: Activating Our Cultural Legacies

  One of the transformational relationships we have built over the last several years has been with The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which saw the need for the Neuberger to be able to document and preserve its own history. 

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  backstory50: Transformative Giving

  Endowments both enrich and transform the trajectory of a museum, providing financial support for things such as new acquisitions, updated technology, and even the hiring and longevity of staff positions.

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  backstory50: Fluxus

  Following last week’s backstory50 about Yoko Ono’s Mend Piece iterations and her role in Fluxus, performance, and instruction art, this week’s backstory50 highlights the Neuberger’s 1983 exhibition Fluxus, etc.: The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection and the FLUXFEST that was held in tandem with it. Read more here. 

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  backstory50: Participatory Art

  At the Neuberger we like to produce exhibition projects where everyone can participate in the art making.

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  backstory50: Welded!

  The beautiful thing about art is that it communicates, in one way or another, with its setting–whether it be inside the white-cube gallery of a museum, or within a grassy patch of a bustling park. 

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  backstory50: Constructivist Art at the NEU

  When The Making of a Museum exhibition opened in 1974, Roy R. Neuberger’s modern art collection was the largest of five groups of art represented in the show. Hans Richters’ collection of Dada art, which we wrote about a few weeks ago was a second. Today, Curatorial Assistant Rem Ribeiro is helping me introduce a third: the George and Edith Rickey Collection of Constructivist Art.

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  backstory50: Featured Partnership: Neuberger Berman

  In the 1950s, few outside the museum world could imagine going to the office every day and being surrounded by the work of some of the world’s most well-known—and emerging—contemporary artists. Unless, of course, you happened to have worked at Neuberger Berman. 

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  backstory50: Firsts

  In January of 2022 I wrote to you about Faith Ringgold’s mural-size painting entitled For the Women’s House (1971), painted for the women then incarcerated on Rikers Island. The work was the final piece created for American People, a series of paintings—her first, actually—created between 1963 and 1971.

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  backstory50: The largest Edward Hopper

  It’s true. Barber Shop (1931) is the largest work Edward Hopper ever painted. 

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  backstory50: Happy Birthday, Roy!

  This past Sunday, July 21, was the 121st anniversary of Roy R. Neuberger’s birthday. This week it seems fitting to focus on one of the most wonderful sets of objects in the Neuberger’s collection, what we lovingly call the “Birthday Books.”

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  backstory50: Catlett x 2

  So, right now we have a work on view that is in two places at one time—Elizabeth Catlett’s study Homage to Black Women Poets (1984). OK, it’s not really visible in two places, but the object is a part of both The Making of a Museum: 50 Years and Reflection / Refraction … although it’s only physically on view in the latter.

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  backstory50: In the public eye

  Do you remember these hammocks? I do. Laura Anderson Barbata’s Nuestra historia no se encuentra en un libro [Our history Is Not Found in a Book] was one of the first outdoor sculpture projects I saw when I arrived on the Purchase College campus many years ago. I didn’t realize immediately that it was a sculpture project... which is one of the most interesting things to me about public art in general.

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  backstory50: Artist as Curator

  Many years ago, when I was Chief Curator at the Neuberger, I was thinking about putting together an exhibition of the work of Forrest Bess. We have a wonderful painting of his work in our collection entitled Before Man, which was purchased by Roy R. Neuberger from the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1978 and donated to the Neuberger in 1986.

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  backstory50: Creative aging

  Last year the Neuberger Museum of Art initiated the NEU Vitality Art Workshops, a series of programs for members of our community who are over the age of 55.

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  backstory50: Juneteenth

  All this year these backstory messages have focused on the celebration of the Museum’s 50th anniversary, focusing on today through the lens of the past. 

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  backstory50: Nevelson at Purchase, 1977

  Do you recognize this sculpture, being craned into place for the Neuberger’s 1977 Louise Nevelson exhibition? You may if you’ve spent time across the street from Purchase College at the Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Gardens at PepsiCo.

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  backstory50: Dada Art at the NEU

  The extraordinary depth and quality of the objects that Roy R. Neuberger donated to the Museum over the course of his lifetime can overshadow some of the other extraordinary areas of the Museum’s collection. One of those areas is the Hans Richter Collection of Dada Art.

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  backstory50: Training the next generation

  The Neuberger Museum of Art has always trained students in curatorial practice and the student-curated exhibition has long been a hallmark of that training.

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  backstory50: The Museum as Classroom

  In my Ph.D. program in art history at Rutgers I had an unexpected experience. Part of my funding required that I serve as a teaching assistant and, to my great surprise, I found that I loved being in the classroom. Eventually, teaching my own classes but still intent on continuing my museum career that was already a decade-long prior to grad school, I came to understand the ways in which museums could function as classrooms.

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  backstory50: 1974 Inaugural Exhibition

  Fifty years ago this week, the Neuberger Museum of Art opened its doors to the public with its very first exhibition, The Making of a Museum. 

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  backstory50: Robert Indiana’s “Art” (fronted by a follow-up about uric acid)

  So, last week’s backstory50 got a LOT of raised eyebrows.

  I kind of thought it might. 

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  backstory50: Here’s why we moved the Henry Moore

  Yeah… we moved it. 

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  backstory50: A collection in service to others

  On June 19, 1960, a critic for The New York Times wrote, “No private collection in this country, or for that matter anywhere, has been more generously put into service of the public than that of Mr. and Mrs. Roy R. Neuberger.”

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  backstory50: Dismantling the “Van Gogh Effect”

  This is a story best told by Roy R. Neuberger in his own words (excerpted from The Passionate Collector):

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  backstory50: The Yaseen Lectures

  As we prepare to host the first of the Museum’s 50^th anniversary celebratory social events this weekend, I’ve been reflecting about the incredible legacies that were established by some of our founding members.
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  backstory50: Transformational Giving

  Today, I want to tell you about one of the Neuberger Museum of Art’s greatest supporters, the Straus family.

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  backstory50: The biggest gallery around

  I hope you will all be joining us next month for our 50th anniversary celebration events.  When we gather in the Theater Gallery on Saturday evening, April 13, to honor Janet Langsam, Fred Wilson, and Lois Bregstein, surrounded by the site-specific painting, Threnody, we will be in one of the largest exhibitions spaces in the region. 

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  backstory50: Rethinking our objects from Africa

  Objects from Africa have been on view at the Neuberger Museum of Art since it opened to the public in 1974. 

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  backstory50: On display at the Museum of Modern Art

  This is one of my favorite stories because it connects our campus to another great institution, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

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  backstory50: The Museum Service Council

  Another of the Neuberger’s great support organizations is the Museum Service Council. The MSC is comprised of devoted art lovers who have volunteered hours and hours of their time to the education of generations of students—from the College and from the community—who have walked through the doors of the Museum.

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  backstory50: The Friends of the Neuberger Museum of Art

  One the best things about the Neuberger Museum of Art are the people who make up our community. And among the ‘best of the best’ are the leaders who have, for so long now, been a part of our amazing support and advisory group, the Friends of the Neuberger Museum of Art.

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  backstory50: Threnody

  Opening today, Cleve Gray’s Threnody is on view again as part of the Museum’s 50th anniversary celebration.  

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  backstory50: Happy Valentine’s Day!

  Today’s story is your story to tell.

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  backstory50: Building a Museum collection

  A few weeks ago, I wrote about Roy R. Neuberger’s 1969 founding promised gift. Twenty-nine objects were accessioned by the Neuberger Museum of Art in that year. Since then, the Museum’s collection has grown to comprise nearly 7,000 objects, which have been donated, promised, bequeathed, and purchased.

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  backstory50: Building a Museum

  No, it’s not shiny, or fancy, or visible from the road. But that’s not what it was supposed to be. 

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  backstory50: The Academical Village

  The master plan for Purchase College was inspired by Thomas Jefferson’s master plan for the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

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  backstory50: The Passionate Collector

  In 2002, as Roy R. Neuberger turned 100, he published his second memoir, The Passionate Collector: Eighty Years in the World of Art. He dedicated the book “with great affection and respect to the extraordinary, original, passionate artists who have enriched my life beyond measure.” 

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  backstory50: The Promised Gift

  Do you know which work of art was the very first to enter the Museum’s collection? 

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  backstory50: Happy and Happy

  2024. A great year. Why? Because the Neuberger Museum of Art is celebrating its 50th anniversary! 

• backstory: Celebrate with us!

  Between your other festive holiday happenings, take a minute to mark your calendars for some of the special events that we’ll be hosting at the Museum during our Year of Celebration! 

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  backstory: Our 50th Anniversary

  You’ve heard me mention that all year next year the Neuberger will be celebrating our 50th anniversary. 

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  backstory: November 19 and the Friends

  You’ve heard me mention that next year we’ll be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Museum. This milestone wouldn’t be possible without the support of the Friends of the Neuberger Museum of Art. It’s true. We wouldn’t be one of the top academic art museums in the country without the Friends organization. 

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  backstory: Groundbreaking

  This Friday, October 6, marks the 54th anniversary of the groundbreaking for the museum.