The Harvard Art Museum has announced a major gift of German art primarily since 1960 donated by the Friends of the Busch-Reisinger Museum. The gift comprises 50 to 75 works by contemporary artists and is being assembled under the guidance of art historian Siegfried Gohr in Germany. It celebrates the 25th anniversary of the German-based Friends group and will be donated over the coming years, with the first installment of 26 works this fall.
The works of art will enter the permanent collection of the Busch-Reisinger Museum and will be known as the “Friends Anniversary Collection.” The Busch-Reisinger Museum is the only museum in America devoted to promoting the arts of Central and Northern Europe of all periods, with a special emphasis on the German-speaking countries. Among the handful of museums in this country to have world-class collections from this region, it is the only such collection within a university.
Founded in Germany in 1983, the Friends of the Busch-Reisinger Museum/ Verein der Freunde des Busch-Reisinger Museum now has more than 240 members, based mainly in Germany, but also in other countries, including Austria, Switzerland and the United States.
The works of art in the Friends gift are organized in four categories: individual major paintings, representative groups of eight to ten major drawings by significant artists, photographs by members of the so-called Düsseldorf School, and groups of multiples by artists for whom work in that medium is important.
“The Friends had an extraordinary tradition of generosity to the Busch-Reisinger Museum, and we are enormously grateful to Siegfried for initiating, organizing and contributing to this important project,” said Peter Nisbet, Daimler-Benz Curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum.
“The addition of this splendid collection, generously donated by a range of German collectors and artists, will strengthen the Busch-Reisinger Museum’s prominence as a center for the study of German art. It will be the capstone of two-and-a-half decades of sustained support of the museum by the Friends,” he added.
Among the works being donated in the first installment is a major painting by Georg Baselitz, “Male Nude (Self Portrait),” 1973/74, on view through January 4 at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, and another early work by Baselitz, “Saxon Motif,” 1964, as well as two paintings by A.R. Penck, multiples by Rosemarie Trockel, photographs by Candida Höfer and Boris Becker, and groups of drawings by Ernst Wilhelm Nay and Markus Lüpertz.
Founded in 1901 as the Germanic Museum, the Busch-Reisinger Museum has particularly important holdings of Austrian Secession art, German expressionism, 1920s abstraction, and material related to the Bauhaus. Its significant holdings of postwar and contemporary art from German-speaking Europe include a collection of the editioned artworks by artist Joseph Beuys.
For additional information, www.harvardartmuseum.org or 617-495-9400.
