In a major collaboration among three institutions, “Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective” opens at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA) on November 16. The landmark installation comprises 40 years of work by LeWitt, one of the most influential contemporary artists of the last half century.
Conceived by the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Conn., in collaboration with the artist before his death in April 2007, the project has been undertaken by the gallery, Mass MoCA and the Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Mass. The installation will remain on view for 25 years, occupying a 27,000-square-foot historic mill building in the heart of Mass MoCA’s campus. The three-story building, which is being fully restored for this exhibition by Bruner/Cott and Associates architects, will be outfitted with a complex sequence of new interior walls constructed to LeWitt’s own specifications.
“Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective” will consist of 100 works †covering nearly an acre of wall surface †that LeWitt created from 1968 to 2007. The works in the retrospective will be on loan from numerous private and public collections worldwide, including the Yale University Art Gallery, to which LeWitt donated a number of wall drawings.
LeWitt †who stressed the idea behind his work over its execution †is widely regarded as one of the leading exponents of Minimalism and Conceptual art, known primarily for his deceptively simple geometric structures and dynamic wall drawings. His experiments with the latter commenced in 1968 and were considered radical, in part because this new form of drawing was purposely temporal and often executed not just by LeWitt but also by other artists and students whom he invited to assist him in the installation of his artworks.
“Detailed,” “painstaking” and “strangely liberating” are terms that have been used to describe the experience of creating LeWitt’s monumental wall drawings. The drawings at Mass MoCA are being executed over a six-month period by 24 of the senior and seasoned assistants who worked with the artist over many years. They are joined by 30 students from Yale University, Williams College and North Adams’s Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, as well as by undergraduate students from other colleges and universities around the country.
Mass MoCA’s North Adams location, just five miles from Williams College, in Williamstown, offers a unique educational opportunity for Williams’s undergraduates and those enrolled in its graduate art-history program at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute to participate in this special exhibition. Like Yale, Williams is among the primary training grounds for professionals in the field of art history, and the LeWitt collaboration, to be accompanied by a variety of educational programs, will offer students a valuable opportunity to study the work of this important artist.
In conjunction with the project, the Williams College Museum of Art will annually create a series of programs and shorter-term companion “teaching exhibitions” in a space at the entrance of Building #7 and at the Williams College Museum of Art.
The Yale University Art Gallery has embarked on the research and production of Sol LeWitt Wall Drawings: A Catalogue Raisonné , which will be co-published in 2010 by the gallery and Yale University Press. The basic design for this three-volume scholarly resource was created by the artist during his lifetime. The catalogue raisonné will contain descriptive texts, diagrams, installation photographs and more for all 1,254 wall drawings that LeWitt realized from 1968 to 2007. A DVD illustrating the proper uses of materials and drawing techniques to be employed in realizing LeWitt’s basic “families” of wall drawings will also be included, providing a helpful guide to their proper future installation, as well as to their long-term care and conservation.
The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art is at 1040 Mass MoCA Way. For information, 413-664-4481 or www.massmoca.org .
