COURTESY THE ARTIST AND HAUSER & WIRTH
The Nasher Sculpture Center announced yesterday that, following a gift of $750,000 from the Kaleta A. Doolin Foundation, the museum will form an acquisitions fund for work by women artists.
“It is the Nasher Sculpture Center’s great fortune to be granted this generous acquisitions gift, and we could not be more grateful to Ms. Doolin or excited about the possibilities this gift affords,” museum director Jeremy Strick said in a statement. “To be able to expand and enrich the Collection’s holdings of work made by women artists is of paramount importance, helping round out the permanent collection and highlight the tremendous contributions that women have made, and continue to make, to sculpture.”
The first work the museum will acquire through the fund will be Phyllida Barlow’s untitled:hangingmonument2015, which can currently be seen in “tryst,” a survey of the British sculptor’s work at the Nasher, in Dallas. The sculpture, based on a time when Barlow and her husband saw a large form being extracted from the ground at a Texas oil field, was made specifically for the Nasher.
Though the Nasher currently owns work by Nancy Grossman, Barbara Hepworth, and Beverly Pepper, the museum’s collection continues to be dominated by art made by male artists. The museum’s new fund will now begin to change that imbalance.