After “The Wild”: Contemporary Art from The Barnett and Annalee Newman Foundation Collection highlights works by 47 intergenerational and internationally-based artists made between 1963 – 2023.
Barnett Newman (1905-1970) is among the most influential artists associated with Abstract Expressionism. Largely overlooked by critics, curators, and collectors until his later years, he was nonetheless a stalwart and generous supporter of his colleagues, befriending and mentoring countless younger artists. To them, Newman appeared not as an old master but as a true peer—curious, engaged, and as eager to delve into the nuances of technique as to art’s philosophical underpinnings. After his death, Annalee Newman, his widow, created The Barnett and Annalee Newman Foundation to help further the spirit of great art that Barnett Newman so clearly exhibited, by giving grants. Diverse in style, training, background, and age, The Foundation’s grantees—whose works comprise this exhibition—share Newman’s seriousness of purpose, as well as his unflagging drive to explore the outer limits of his own ideas.