A cache of more than 800 works of art, including pieces by major figures from Jenny Holzer and Jeff Koons to Eija-Liisa Ahtila, has been promised to the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Centre Georges Pompidou, the museums have announced.
New York-based art collectors and art advisors Thea Westreich Wagner and her husband Ethan Wagner will donate about 500 works, from the ‘50s to the present, by about 70 American artists, to the Whitney. They will give 300 pieces by 27 European artists from the same period to the Pompidou.
Works by art stars such as Dan Flavin, Robert Gober, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman and Laurie Simmons will be part of the gift to the Whitney. There are examples in various mediums, such as a Holzer bench and a vintage print of Diane Arbus’s iconic Puerto Rican Woman with a Beauty Mark, N.Y.C. (1965).
Destined for the Pompidou are works by artists including Philippe Parreno, Eija Liisa Ahtila, Jan Mancuska and Miroslav Tichy. Also represented are younger artists such as Merlin Carpenter, Klara Liden and Josef Strau.
The gifts will go on view in 2015-16, the year the Whitney opens its new facility in the Meatpacking District of downtown Manhattan, and then travel to Paris.
