ArtsWestchester and BNY Mellon Wealth Management Announce Art Partnership
ArtsWestchester has opened a new exhibit at its gallery in White Plains. “Drawing Line into Form: Works on Paper by Sculptors from the BNY Mellon Collection” is part of the ArtsWestchester’s latest initiatives to develop 50 new arts and business partnerships in recognition of its 50th anniversary in 2015.
The expansive art collection, encompassing 69 works on paper, includes exploratory studies and stand-alone finished works of art by some of the most noted sculptors of our time, including Alexander Calder, Mark di Suvero, Olafur Eliasson, Sol Lewitt, Maya Lin, Henry Moore, Kiki Smith and Fred Wilson.
“ArtsWestchester is privileged to have been selected by BNY Mellon Wealth Management to show these works in our gallery,” said Janet Langsam, ArtsWestchester CEO, during the exhibit’s opening reception on Thursday evening. “Hosting this corporate art collection is an example of one of the 50 arts and business partnerships initiated in recognition of our golden anniversary. Our goal with this initiative is to further sustain the vibrant arts community in the county that we have helped to build and nurture since 1965.”
BNY Mellon is one of the world’s most active corporate supporters of the arts, and one of the few companies that still has an active collection. “Assembling this collection has been a journey of discovery,” said Brian J. Lang, BNY Mellon Curator. “Each work of art opens a new window into the mind of its creator.”
In the art collection, British artist Martin Creed, along with Jessica Stockholder and John Chamberlain, investigates the potential of color in abstract works. Others, such as Paul McCarthy and Robert Smithson, play-out future monumental-size three-dimensional works in two-dimensional graphite on paper.
Venice Bienniel artist Sarah Szeis is represented in the show with a mammoth six-foot long drawing, an explosion of color and geometry on a grand scale. Alice Aycock’s colorful drawing, The Indian World View, with the Island of the Rose Apple Tree, presents an imagined structure for a fabled paradise. Maya Lin, known for the elegant minimalism of her design for the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial on Washington, D.C., is represented with an evocative drawing that recalls an aerial view of a river valley.
Sculptor Louise Bourgeois has said that her parents valued her for her ability to draw. Her parents were in the tapestry restoration business, and Louise would draw in the missing parts of the items to be repaired. One of her drawings, a seemingly inverted tower of geometric forms, is among the works in the unique exhibition.
The exhibit will be open through December 6. ArtsWestchester is located at 31 Mamaroneck Avenue in White Plains. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 12 to 5 p.m. For more information about the exhibit and ArtsWestchester, visit www.artsw.org or call 914-428-4220.
