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35-528: NYU's art collection was transformed into the Grey Art Gallery in 1973 following a major gift of one thousand works from Abby Weed Grey . The museum opened to the public in 1975. The Abby Weed Grey Collection of Modern Asian and Middle Eastern Art at NYU comprises some 700 works produced by artists from countries as diverse as Japan , Thailand , India , Kashmir , Nepal , Pakistan , Iran , Turkey , and Israel . The Grey Art Gallery also oversees

70-511: A Joseph Cornell box, Chocolat Menier , from 1952. The collection's particular strength is American painting from the 1940s to the present. European prints are also well represented, with works by Henri Matisse , Joan Miró , and Picasso , to name a few. Artists in the NYU Art Collection include: Milton Avery , Ilya Bolotowsky , Sonia Delaunay , Arshile Gorky , Édouard Manet , Francis Picabia , and many others. The collection

105-467: A filing system of over 160 visual-documentary "dossiers" on themes that interested him; the dossiers served as repositories from which Cornell drew material and inspiration for boxes like his "penny arcade" portrait of Lauren Bacall . He had no formal training in art, although he was extremely well-read and was conversant with the New York art scene from the 1940s through to the 1960s. His methodology

140-578: A kind of suspension until the film's most arresting sequence toward the end, when footage of a solar eclipse is juxtaposed with a white ball falling into a pool of water in slow motion. Cornell premiered the film at the Julien Levy Gallery in December 1936 during the first Surrealist exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Salvador Dalí , who was in New York to attend

175-613: A nursery teacher. Both parents came from socially prominent families of Dutch ancestry, long-established in New York State. Cornell's father died April 30, 1917, leaving the family in straitened circumstances. Following the elder Cornell's death, his widow and children moved to the borough of Queens in New York City . Cornell attended Phillips Academy in Andover , Massachusetts, in the class of 1921. Although he reached

210-457: A selection of the exhibitions organized by the Grey Art Gallery at New York University from its opening in 1975 through today. 40°43′50″N 73°59′58″W  /  40.7305°N 73.9995°W  / 40.7305; -73.9995 Abby Weed Grey Abby Weed Grey (1902–1983) was an art collector and patron for whom New York University's Grey Art Gallery is named. Grey had a particular interest in non-Western modern art and art of

245-417: Is described in a monograph by Charles Simic as: Somewhere in the city of New York there are four or five still-unknown objects that belong together. Once together they'll make a work of art. That's Cornell's premise, his metaphysics, and his religion. ... Marcel Duchamp and John Cage use chance operation to get rid of the subjectivity of the artist. For Cornell it's the opposite. To submit to chance

280-434: Is especially rich in works by artists working in New York in the 1950s and '60s, such as Willem de Kooning , Helen Frankenthaler , Adolph Gottlieb , Al Held , Romare Bearden , Ching Ho Cheng , Hans Hofmann , Alex Katz , Nicholas Krushenick , Yayoi Kusama , Agnes Martin , Robert Motherwell , Louise Nevelson , Kenneth Noland , Robert Rauschenberg , Ad Reinhardt , and Bernard (Tony) Rosenthal . This list comprises

315-398: Is to reveal the self and its obsessions. In his later years, Cornell utilized the help of assistants to create his artworks. These assistants included both local art students and practicing artists such as Larry Jordan and Terry Shutté. He greatly enjoyed working with young artists and teaching them his methods and art practices. Joseph Cornell's 1936 found-film montage Rose Hobart

350-785: The Minneapolis College of Art and Design 's Board of Overseers (1964–1983). In 1974 she established the Grey Art Gallery at New York University . She endowed the Grey Fellowship in Museum Studies at the Walker Art Center , and in 1979, established and endowed The Grey Fine Arts Library and Study Center , a resource in NYU's Department of Art History (formerly Department of Fine Arts). Grey

385-527: The 1920s, or possibly earlier, he read the writings of Mary Baker Eddy , including Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures . Cornell considered Eddy's works to be among the most important books ever published after the Bible, and he became a lifelong Christian Science adherent. Christian Science belief and practice informed Cornell's art deeply, as art historian Sandra Leonard Starr has shown. He

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420-546: The 1940s, Cornell also worked in a plant nursery (which would figure in his famous dossier "GC44") and briefly in a defense plant, and designed covers and feature layouts for Harper's Bazaar , View , Dance Index , and other magazines. He only really began to sell his boxes for significant sums after his 1949 solo show at the Charles Egan Gallery . Cornell eventually began a passionate, but platonic , relationship with Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama while she

455-585: The Gallery was housed in the Silver Center (formerly Main Building), on the site on NYU's original home, the legendary University Building (1835–94), where artists and writers, including Samuel Colt, Winslow Homer, George Inness, and Henry James, worked. It was also here that Professor Samuel F. B. Morse established the first academic art department in the U.S. Between 1927 and 1942, the space that became

490-399: The Grey Art Gallery is now guardian, was founded in 1958 with NYU's acquisition of Francis Picabia 's Resonateur ( c.  1922 ) and Fritz Glarner 's Relational Painting (1949–50). Today the collection (which includes approximately 6,000 objects) is primarily composed of late-19th and 20th-century works, ranging from Pablo Picasso 's monumental public sculpture Bust of Sylvette to

525-594: The Grey hosted Albert Eugene Gallatin Gallery (later Museum) of Living Art—the first American museum exclusively devoted to modernist art. In exhibiting work by Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger , Joan Miró, Kazimir Malevich , Piet Mondrian , Jean Arp , and artists associated with the American Abstract Artists group, Gallatin created a forum for intellectual exchange and a place where visitors could view

560-796: The Middle East was particularly well-represented in her collection. Abby Weed was born in 1902 in Minnesota and was educated at Vassar College . She married Benjamin Edwards Grey, an army officer, in 1924. Grey was a native of Saint Paul , Minnesota . She established the Ben and Abby Grey Foundation to sponsor artists after her husband died in 1956. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Grey undertook curatorial projects such as Fourteen Contemporary Iranians (1962–65), curated by Parviz Tanavoli and Turkish Art Today (1966–70), each of which toured

595-569: The Middle East. The Abby Weed Grey Collection constitutes the largest institutional holdings of modern Iranian and Turkish art outside those countries. Grey was especially supportive of Iranian art, which comprises one-fifth of her collection at NYU. She also donated significant holdings of works by artists from Turkey and India. Many of the artists whose works she collected adapted their culture's indigenous aesthetic traditions to contemporary circumstances, and they often blend representation and abstraction. The New York University Art Collection, of which

630-656: The MoMA opening, was present at its first screening. During the screening, Dalí became outraged at Cornell's movie, claiming he had just had the same idea of applying collage techniques to film. After the screening, Dalí remarked to Cornell that he should stick to making boxes and stop making films. Traumatized by this event, the shy, retiring Cornell showed his films rarely thereafter. Joseph Cornell continued to experiment with film until his death in 1972. While his earlier films were often collages of found short films, his later ones montaged together footage he expressly commissioned from

665-466: The New York City area. Cornell's most characteristic art works were boxed assemblages created from found objects. These are simple shadow boxes , usually fronted with a glass pane, in which he arranged eclectic fragments of photographs or Victorian bric-a-brac , in a way that combines the formal austerity of Constructivism with the lively fantasy of Surrealism . Many of his boxes, such as

700-1079: The Surrealist use of irrational juxtaposition, and on the evocation of nostalgia , for their appeal. Cornell often made series of boxed assemblages that reflected his various interests: the Soap Bubble Sets , the Medici Slot Machine series, the Pink Palace series, the Hotel series, the Observatory series, and the Space Object Boxes , among others. Also captivated with birds, Cornell created an Aviary series of boxes, in which colorful images of various birds were mounted on wood, cut out, and set against harsh white backgrounds. In addition to creating boxes and flat collages and making short art films, Cornell also kept

735-594: The United States; Communication Through Art (1964), which opened simultaneously in Istanbul , Tehran , and Lahore , before traveling throughout the eastern Mediterranean, Asia, and eastern Africa; and One World Through Art. By 1979, Grey had become one of American's prominent collectors of Asian and Middle Eastern art. Grey served on the Board of Trustees of The Minnesota Society of Fine Arts (1967–1973) and

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770-674: The art collection of New York University. Founded in 1958 with the acquisition of Francis Picabia 's Resonateur (1922) and Fritz Glarner 's Relational Painting (1949–50), the NYU Art Collection comprises approximately 5,000 works, mainly dating from the 19th and 20th centuries, such as Pablo Picasso 's Bust of Sylvette (1967), currently installed at University Village (Manhattan) ; Joseph Cornell 's Chocolat Menier (1952); and works by Henri Matisse , Joan Miró , and Ilya Bolotowsky , as well as Romare Bearden , Arshile Gorky , Adolph Gottlieb , Kenneth Noland , Jane Freilicher , Ad Reinhardt , and Alex Katz , among many others. Until 2023,

805-477: The artist. The jewel-like box, with images of Bacall on blue background, was inspired by To Have and Have Not , a film starring Bacall and Humphrey Bogart . Cornell was wary of strangers. This led him to isolate himself and become a self-taught artist. Although he expressed attraction to unattainable women like Lauren Bacall , his shyness made romantic relationships almost impossible. In later life his bashfulness verged toward reclusiveness, and he rarely left

840-408: The famous Medici Slot Machine boxes, are interactive and are meant to be handled. Like Kurt Schwitters , Cornell could create poetry from the commonplace. Unlike Schwitters, however, he was fascinated not by refuse, garbage, and the discarded, but by fragments of once beautiful and precious objects he found on his frequent trips to the bookshops and thrift stores of New York. His boxes relied on

875-557: The historic venue's renovation and improvement of the historic venue, and the doors reopened as the Grey Art Gallery and Study Center in 1975. Weed Grey collected some 700 works of modern art on her travels throughout Asia and the Middle East. In 1983, Grey Art Gallery was the first organization in the United States to show a major Frida Kahlo exhibit. The gallery was endowed by Abby Weed Grey, who also donated some 700 works of modern art that she acquired during her frequent travels in Asia and

910-580: The latest developments in art. In 2023, NYU announced that when it reopened in March 2024 following renovations and a closure for the COVID-19 pandemic, the museum would be known as the Grey Art Museum and would move to 18 Cooper Square where it would have larger galleries as well as a study center. NYU lacked a permanent museum until 1975, when a private donation gift from Abby Weed Grey enabled

945-671: The professional filmmakers with whom he collaborated. These latter films were often set in some of Cornell's favorite neighborhoods and landmarks in New York City: Mulberry Street , Bryant Park , Union Square Park , and the Third Avenue Elevated Railway , among others. In 1969 Cornell gave a collection of both his own films and the works of others to Anthology Film Archives in New York City. Cornell’s first major museum retrospective, curated by legendary museum director Walter Hopps ,

980-440: The senior year, he did not graduate. Following this, he returned to live with his family. Except for the three-and-a-half years he spent at Phillips, he lived for most of his life in a small, wood-frame house on Utopia Parkway in a working-class area of Flushing , along with his mother and his brother Robert, whom cerebral palsy had rendered physically disabled. Aside from his time at Andover, Cornell never traveled beyond

1015-460: The state of New York . However, he preferred talking with women, and often made their husbands wait in the next room when he discussed business with them. He also had numerous friendships with ballerinas, who found him unique, but too eccentric to be a romantic partner. He devoted his life to caring for his younger brother Robert, who was disabled and lived with cerebral palsy , which was another factor in his lack of relationships. At some point in

1050-508: Was also rather poor for most of his life, working during the 1920s as a wholesale fabric salesman to support his family. As a result of the American Great Depression , Cornell lost his textile industry job in 1931, and worked for a short time thereafter as a door-to-door appliance salesman. During this time, through her friendship with Ethel Traphagen, Cornell's mother secured him a part-time position designing textiles. In

1085-600: Was also the author of The Picture is the Window; the Window is the Picture, her autobiography, which was published by New York University Press. Joseph Cornell Joseph Cornell (December 24, 1903 – December 29, 1972) was an American visual artist and filmmaker, one of the pioneers and most celebrated exponents of assemblage . Influenced by the Surrealists , he was also an avant-garde experimental filmmaker . He

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1120-645: Was entitled An Exhibition of Works by Joseph Cornell . It opened at the Pasadena Art Museum (now the Norton Simon Museum ) in December 1966, then traveled to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Sold from the estate of Edwin and Lindy Bergman, Chicago-based collectors and art patrons, Cornell's Untitled (Penny Arcade Portrait of Lauren Bacall ) (1946) fetched $ 5.3 million at Christie's New York, setting an auction record for

1155-526: Was largely self-taught in his artistic efforts, and improvised his own original style incorporating cast-off and discarded artifacts. He lived most of his life in relative physical isolation, caring for his mother and his disabled brother at home, but remained aware of and in contact with other contemporary artists. Joseph Cornell was born in Nyack , New York, to Joseph Cornell, a textiles industry executive, and Helen Ten Broeck Storms Cornell, who had trained as

1190-415: Was living in New York in the mid-1960s. She was twenty-six years his junior; they would call each other daily, sketch each other, and he would send personalized collages to her. Their lengthy association lasted even after her return to Japan, ending only with his death in 1972. Cornell's brother Robert died in 1965, and his mother in 1966. Joseph Cornell died of apparent heart failure on December 29, 1972,

1225-633: Was made entirely from splicing together existing film stock that Cornell had found in New Jersey warehouses, mostly derived from a 1931 "B" film entitled East of Borneo . Cornell would play Nestor Amaral 's record Holiday in Brazil during its rare screenings, as well as projecting the film through a deep blue glass or filter, giving the film a dreamlike effect. Focusing mainly on the gestures and expressions made by Rose Hobart (the original film's starlet), this dreamscape of Cornell's seems to exist in

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