Philadelphia in New York 90 modern works from the ... · Philadelphia in New York 90 modern works from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. [Catalogue of the exhibition] October 18, 1972-January
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Philadelphia in New York Philadelphia in New York 90 modern90 modernworks from the Philadelphia Museum ofworks from the Philadelphia Museum ofArt. [Catalogue of the exhibition]Art. [Catalogue of the exhibition]October 18, 1972-January 7, 1973, theOctober 18, 1972-January 7, 1973, theMuseum of Modern Art, New YorkMuseum of Modern Art, New York
Author
Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.)
Date
1972
Publisher
[publisher not identified]
Exhibition URL
www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/2552
The Museum of Modern Art's exhibition history—
from our founding in 1929 to the present—is
available online. It includes exhibition catalogues,
David Rockefeller, Chairman; Henry Allen Moe, John Hay Whitney, Gardner Cowles, Vice
Chairmen; William S. Paley, President; James Thrall Soby, Mrs. Bliss Parkinson, J.Frederic Byers III, Vice Presidents; Willard C. Butcher, Treasurer; Robert 0. Ander
son; Mrs. Douglas Auchincloss; Walter Bareiss; Robert R. Barker; * Alfred H. Barr,
Jr.; Mrs. Armand P. Bartos; William A. M. Burden; Ivan Chermayeff; Dr. Mamie Phipps
Clark; John de Menil; Mrs. C. Douglas Dillon; William H. Donaldson; * Mrs. Edsel B.
Ford; Gianluigi Gabetti; George Heard Hamilton; * Wallace K. Harrison; * Mrs. WalterHochschild; * James W. Husted; Philip Johnson; Mrs. Frank Y. Larkin; Eric Larrabee;
Gustave L. Levy; John L. Loeb; * Ranald H. Macdonald; * Mrs. G. Macculloch Miller;J. Irwin Miller; * Mrs. Charles S. Payson; Gifford Phillips; Mrs. John D. Rockefeller3rd; Nelson A. Rockefeller; Mrs. Wolfgang Schoenborn; Mrs. Bertram Smith; Mrs. Alfred
R. Stern; Mrs. Donald B. Straus; Walter N. Thayer; * Edward M. M. Warburg; Clifton R.
Wharton, Jr.; * Monroe Wheeler* Honorary Trustee for Life
TRUSTEES OF THE PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART
George M. Cheston, President; William T. Coleman, Jr., Mrs. Albert M. Greenfield,
Paul M. Ingersoll, Henry P. Mcllhenny, Vice Presidents; William P. Wood, Vice President and Treasurer; George B. Clothier, Solicitor; Mrs. Walter H. Annenberg; Richard
C. Bond; Orville H. Bullitt; John R. Bunting, Jr.; Howard Butcher III; Cummins Cather-
wood; Henry Clifford; Bertram D. Coleman; Douglas J. Cooper; Mrs. Rodolphe Meyer deSchauensee; H. Richard Dietrich, Jr.; Fitz Eugene Dixon, Jr.; John T. Dorrance, Jr.;
Mrs. Van Horn Ely; George Friedland; Mrs. Charles B. Grace; David M. Gwinn; Robert
A. Hauslohner; * Miss Anna Warren Ingersoll; R. Sturgis Ingersoll; Morton Jenks;Henry B. Keep; * C. Otto von Kienbusch; Mrs. H. Fairfax Leary, Jr.; Mrs. H. GatesLloyd; * Mrs. Malcolm Lloyd; * Graeme Lorimer; Mrs. Stuart F. Louchheim; Louis C.Madeira; * Mrs. Robert McLean; Robert L. McNeil, Jr.; N. Richard Miller; Mrs. HowardE. Mitchell; James Alan Montgomery, Jr.; Mrs. Herbert C. Morris; Theodore T. Newbold;
* Mrs. Dorothy Norman; Meyer P. Potamkin; * Philip Price; * Mrs. Russell Richardson;Edwin P. Rome; * Lessing J. Rosenwald; Mrs. John C. Russell; Robert Montgomery Scott;
I. M. Scott; * Mrs. Wharton Sinkler; Lawrence M. C. Smith; Mrs. Charles J. Solomon;* Mrs. J. Stogdell Stokes; * James H. W. Thompson; William H. S. Wells; Mrs. JohnWintersteen; Howard A. Wolf; * Morris Wolf; Mrs. William Coxe Wright; Edmund L.Zalinski; * Carl Zigrosser
Ex-officio: Milton J. Shapp, Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; Frank L.
Rizzo, Mayor of the City of Philadelphia; George X. Schwartz, President of City
Council; Robert W. Crawford, President of Fairmount Park Commission; Mrs. J. Ballard
Wells, President, Women's Committee; James Nelson Kise, Mrs. William Wolgin, Co-Chairmen, Friends of the Museum; Raymond G. Perelman, Mrs. William T. Vogt, Co-
Chairmen, The Museum Associates* Honorary Trustee
Front cover: FERNAND LEGER: The City, 1919
Copyright @ 1972, The Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53 Street, New York, New York 10019
Printed in the United States of America
FOREWORD
It is a great privilege for The Museum of Modern Art to present this exhibition of ninety major works lent by the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
For their willingness to share with our public so many masterpieces for
so long a time, we are deeply grateful to the Trustees of the Philadelphia Museum, and in particular, to George M. Cheston, President of the
Museum, and Evan H. Turner, Director of the Museum. Our special thanks
are also due Anne d'Harnoncourt, Curator of the Department of Twentieth-
Century Art, who has given constant assistance in the planning of this
exhibition.
Spanning the period from 1905 to 1944 and presenting primarily
European masters, Philadelphia in New York is part of an exchange of
exhibitions. The other half of the exchange, American Art Since 1945—
A Loan Exhibition from The Museum of Modern Art, appropriately begins in
time where Philadelphia in New York leaves off, when American artists
were assuming leadership in the world of modern art. Directed by Anne
d'Harnoncourt, the exhibition opened in Philadelphia earlier this Fall.
This important exchange represents the first such reciprocal pro
ject The Museum of Modern Art has undertaken with another institution.
It is therefore particularly pleasing that the Philadelphia Museum of
Art has made it possible for us to launch our collaborative efforts with
extraordinary distinction.
Richard E. Oldenburg
Director
The Museum of Modern Art
5
PHILADELPHIA IN NEW YORK
90 MODERN WORKS FROM THE PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART
When in the space of seven years the Philadelphia Museum of Art was
designated the recipient first of the A. E. Gallatin collection (1943),
and then of the Louise and Walter Arensberg collection (1950), it was
destined to be the possessor of one of the world's largest and most dis
criminating assemblages of the art of the first half of this century.
New York reacted to the news of these gifts with admiration for the
acumen of Fiske Kimball, then Director of the Museum, and with under
standable chagrin, since both collections had had their origins in this
city and it had been expected that the Gallatin collection would remain
here. It is some measure of comfort that they are still not very far
away. Philadelphia in New York, spanning the four decades from 1905 to
1944, is inevitably drawn largely, though not exclusively, from these
two great sources.Much has been written about the masterpieces in these two collec
tions: the Picassos ranging from his 1906 Self-Portrait through major
analytical Cubist canvases to his great synthetic Cubist painting of
1921, the Three Musicians; the superb works of Georges Braque and Juan
Gris; the large and fine representation of Fernand Leger, notably his
masterpiece of 1919, The City; the galaxies of works by Constantin
Brancusi and Marcel Duchamp, including that succes de scandale of the
1913 Armory Show, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, and the "Large
Glass" (too fragile to come to New York); capital works of the twenties
and thirties by Joan Miro; Chagall's Cubistic Half-Past Three and
Matisse's famous 1914 portrait, Mile Landsberg; excellent Klees and
Mondrians as well as first-rate canvases by the lesser Cubists, Gleizes,
Metzinger, La Fresnaye, and Delaunay. But there are no books about the
three collectors whose courage and perception brought these works
together, so that a few words about them are appropriate here.
"Walter Arensberg is quite mad. Mrs. Arensberg is mad, too."
These observations, quoted by Henry McBride writing in Dial in 1920,
were made by a "most reasonable and most educated" friend who had just
seen the Arensbergs' collection. Now remembered as daring supporters of
avant-garde artists, both Louise and Walter Arensberg were themselves
artists of some talent in other fields. Mrs. Arensberg, born Mary Louise
Stevens in Ludlow, Massachusetts, was an amateur pianist and singer,
versed in the bel canto style, as well as an admirer of modern music.
Walter Conrad Arensberg, born in Pittsburgh in 1878, was the 1900 Class
Poet at Harvard, where he later briefly taught English. After a stint
as a reporter on the New York Evening Post, he published translations
of Baudelaire, Verlaine, Mallarmi, de Nerval and other French poets,
as well as several volumes of his own verse. Alfred Kreymborg, with
whom Arensberg founded the short-lived poetry magazine Others in 1916,
wrote of his poetry: "A profound classical scholar and reticent
aesthete, he made each new movement his own, tried it awhile and then