In the Library: Selections from the Dwan Gallery and Virginia Dwan Archives

September 30, 2016 – January 29, 2017
East Building, Study Center Library

This exhibition is no longer on view at the National Gallery.

Overview: In conjunction with the exhibition Los Angeles to New York: Dwan Gallery, 1959–1971, the National Gallery of Art Library will present documentary material drawn from the library collection as well as the Dwan Gallery Archives and Virginia Dwan Archives. The installation will provide a deeper look into Dwan Gallery’s operations, highlighting its evolution as it shifted from a West Coast venue for established New York and European avant-garde artists in the early 1960s to become one of New York’s leading galleries devoted to new movements including minimalism, conceptual art, and land art in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The library installation will also offer a view of gallerist and patron Virginia Dwan’s relationships with the artists she represented and befriended. Posters, announcements, and catalogs—along with ledger books, exhibition checklists, and correspondence—tell the stories behind some of Dwan Gallery’s most significant shows. Also included are Virginia Dwan’s personal correspondence and photographs, which document events such as Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely’s visits to California, excursions with Robert Smithson, Sol Lewitt, and Nancy Holt, and visits to the earthworks that Dwan sponsored in the western United States, including Michael Heizer’s Double Negative. The exhibition will conclude with a presentation of Dwan’s promised gift to the library: a copy of Carl Andre’s Seven Books of Poetry, copublished by Dwan Gallery and Seth Siegelaub in 1969.

Organization: Organized by National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Brochure: Selections from the Dwan Gallery and Virginia Dwan Archives by Yuri Long and Paige Rozanski. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2016.