Storm King Art Center

P.O.Box 280, Old Pleasant Hill Road, Mountainbille

New York 10953-0280

Phone: 914-534-3115  Fax: 914-534-4457

URL: http://www.stormking.org

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Andy Goldworthy at Storm King Art Center

May 22 - November 15, 2000

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Storm King Art Center Adds a Major Sculpture
by Mark Di Suvero to its Permanent Collection

Mozart's Birthday to be Installed in 2000 Season

MOUNTAINVILLE, NY - Through the generosity of Maurice Cohen and Margo Cohen, collectors based in Bloom field Hills, Michigan, the Storm King Art Center is adding a major work by Mark di Suvero to its renowned collection of outdoor sculptures. The work, Mozart 's Birthday, will be installed in the Art Center's "green galleries" in 2000.

The Art Center's permanent collection includes works by many of the 20th century's best-known artists: Magdalena Abakanowicz, Siah Armajani, Alice Aycock, Louise Bourgeois, Alexander Calder, Andy Goldsworthy, Robert Grosvenor, Barbara Hepworth, Alexander Liberman, Henry Moore, Louise Nevelson, Isamu Noguchi, Richard Serra, David Smith, and Kenneth Snelson, among others. The gilt from Maurice cohen and Margo Cohen now adds a distinguished new work to those sited throughout the Art Center's 500 acres.

The Mozart bicentennial in 1991 gave di Suvero the impetus for creating the monumental Mozart's Birthday, a complex, exuberant sculpture made of welded steel. Its base resembles a sawhorse, with two open steel triangles crossed by a 40-fToot-long beam. This base supports a massive filigree of open circles and ribbonlike curves, as well as a great V-shaped form that rocks on the end of the crossbeam. The sculpture, which dramatically reflects two of di Suvero's passions-for Mozart's music, and for the power and grandeur of New York City's industrial landscape-is the fourth major work by this artist to enter the collection of the Storm King Art Center.

To give Mozart's Birthday the ample space it needs for proper viewing, the Art center is installing it in the expanse of an open field, where it can be seen in the company of the other sculptures by di Suvero in the Art Center's collection.. Mother Peace (1969-70), Mon Père Mon Père (1973-75 and Pyramidian (1986/98). This exceptional group confirms the Storm King Art Center as the prime destination for anyone interested in the art of Mark di Suvero.

In addition to Mozart's Birthday, the Art Center is receiving two more significant sculptures as gifts of Maurice Cohen and Margo Cohen.

Ronald Bladen's Three Elements (1965) was first shown at The Jewish Museum, New York, in Primary Structures (1966), the epoch-making exhibition that defined the Minimalist movement. The sculpture is composed of three box-like forms, each nine feet tall which stand in a row, leaning forward at a precarious-looking angle of 65 degrees. originally made in plywood, the work was subsequently fabricated in steel and aluminum in 1 966-67, for outdoor installation.

Bladen made this more durable Three Elements in an edition of three, the first of which now belongs to the Storm King Art Center. The second is at The Museum of Modem Art, New York, and the third at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh. Three Elements is the first work by Bladen to enter the collection of the Art Center, where it will join the works of other artists who came to prominence in the 1960s and '70s, such as Sol LeWitt, Claes Oldenburg, and Richard Serra. 

The Art Center is also receiving its first work by the protean Dennis Oppenheim. Originally known as a pioneer in Conceptualism and earthworks, whose sculptures were linked to those of Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer, Oppenheim later shifted his attention to body art and then to sculptures that used the scale and vocabulary of industrial architecture.

Operation for Mining, Elevating and Converting Underground Memories of a Fifth Season was made in 1980 as part of a larger group of Factory and Machine sculptures. An elaborate but non-functional structure of elevators, swinging buckets, tracks, pulleys, troughs, and conveyor belts, the sculpture evokes a paradoxically industrial image for that most intimate and elusive of processes, the workings of memory. The steel-and-wood sculpture, which measures approximately 20 by 40 by 60 feet, incorporates industrial lighting, to convey the impression of a round-the-clock operation.

The permanent collection of the Storm King Art Center is on view daily from April 1 through November 15. The Art Center's exhibition for 2000, Andy Goldsworthy at Storm King Art Center, is on view May 22 to November 15. For driving instructions, the public may call 914-534-31 15. For information on transportation from New York City by ShortLine Bus, call 800-63 1-8405.

For Further information:

Bree Jeppson
The Kreisberg Group, Ltd.
1926 Broadway, Suite 601
New York, NY 10023
(212) 799-5515 (telephone)
(212) 799-5535 (telefax)
[email protected] (e-mail)