Larry Rivers, American, 1923–2002, Maquette for Larry Rivers Exhibition at Dwan Gallery, 1961, collage of cut-out text, paint, and tape on gelatin silver print mounted on paper board, Collection of Virginia Dwan
Los Angeles to New York: Dwan Gallery 1957–1971
Robert Rauschenberg, American, 1925–2008, Coexistence, 1961, oil, fabric, wood, and other found materials on canvas, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Gift of the Sydney and Frances Lewis Foundation
Martial Raysse, French, born 1936, Made in Japan, 1964, photo-mechanical reproductions and wallpaper with airbrush ink, gouache, ink, tacks, peacock feathers, and plastic flies on paper mounted on fiberboard, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1972
Los Angeles to New York: Dwan Gallery 1957–1971
Arman, American, born France, 1928–2005, Alarm Clocks (Reveils), 1960, alarm clocks in painted wood box, Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Gift of Debra and Robert N. Mayer from the Robert B. Mayer Memorial Loan Collection
Los Angeles to New York: Dwan Gallery 1957–1971
Jean Tinguely, Swiss, 1925–1991, Portrait of Virginia, 1963, mixed media construction with radio, circuit board, andiron, speaker, and motor, Collection of Virginia Dwan
Los Angeles to New York: Dwan Gallery 1957–1971
Niki de Saint Phalle, French, 1930–2002, Tyrannousaurus Rex etranglé par un cobra, c. 1963, colored markers, ballpoint pen, and graphite on paper, Collection of Virginia Dwan
Dan Flavin, American, 1933–1996, “monument” for V. Tatlin, 1966, cool white fluorescent light, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Virginia Dwan
Mel Bochner, American, born 1940, Language Is Not Transparent, 1970, chalk on paint and wall, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Modern and Contemporary Art Council Fund
Charles Ross, American, born 1937, Star Axis, 1971–ongoing, granite, sandstone, bronze, stainless steel, and earth, Chupinas Mesa, New Mexico. Photograph Kerry Loewen
This exhibition is no longer on view at the National Gallery.
Overview: The remarkable career of gallerist and patron Virginia Dwan will be featured front and center for the first time in an exhibition of some 100 works, featuring highlights from Dwan's promised gift of her extraordinary personal collection to the National Gallery of Art. Founded by Dwan in a storefront in Los Angeles in 1959, Dwan's West Coast enterprise was a leading avant-garde space in the early 1960s, presenting works by abstract expressionists, neo-dadaists, pop artists, and nouveaux réalistes, including Philip Guston, Franz Kline, Ad Reinhardt, Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, Edward Kienholz, Yves Klein, Joseph Kosuth, Arman, Martial Raysse, Niki di Sant Phalle, and Jean Tinguely. In 1965, Dwan established a gallery in New York where she presented groundbreaking exhibitions of such new tendencies as minimalism, conceptual art, and land art, featuring works by Carl Andre, Walter de Maria, Dan Flavin, Michael Heizer, Robert Morris, Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, Charles Ross, Robert Ryman, and Robert Smithson, among others. Dwan emerged as a leading patron of earth works during this period, sponsoring Heizer's monumental sculptures Double Negative (1969) and City (begun 1972); Smithson's masterpiece Spiral Jetty (1970); the first version of Walter de Maria's Lightning Field (1974); and Ross's Star Axis (begun 1971). The exhibition will trace Dwan's activities and the emergence of an avant-garde gallery in an age of mobility, when air travel and the interstate highway system linked the two coasts and transformed the making of art and the sites of its exhibition.
Organization: Organized by National Gallery of Art, Washington
Sponsor: The exhibition is made possible through the generous support of the Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Foundation.
