When Modern Was Contemporary: Selections from the Roy R. Neuberger Collection
Richard Diebenkorn, Girl on a Terrace, 1956. Oil on canvas. 70 1/2 x 65 3/8 in. (179.1 x 166.1 cm). Catalogue raisonnê no 2079. © Richard Diebenkorn Foundation.
When Modern Was Contemporary: Selections from the Roy R. Neuberger Collection is organized by the American Federation of Arts and the Neuberger Museum of Art of Purchase College, SUNY.
Neuberger Berman was the national tour sponsor of When Modern Was Contemporary.
Additional support was provided by the JFM Foundation and Mrs. Donald M. Cox. In-kind support was provided by Christie's. This exhibition was supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and Humanities.
Generous support for the original presentation and the accompanying catalogue was provided by Helen Stambler Neuberger and Jim Neuberger. Sotheby's had provided in-kind support to the Neuberger Museum.
Recognizing the significance of the art of his own time, financier Roy R. Neuberger (1903–2010) acquired work by a remarkable selection of modern masters, including Alexander Calder, Stuart Davis, Willem de Kooning, Marsden Hartley, Jacob Lawrence, Georgia O'Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, and numerous others.
He was committed to buying the work of living artists, in order to support the artists themselves, and formed relationships with many influential artists, dealers, and critics. By 1950, the center of the avant-garde art world had shifted from Paris to New York, and Neuberger's was the most important collection of modern art in the country.
When Modern Was Contemporary featured some fifty paintings and sculptures, illuminating the artistic transformations that took place in the U.S. during the first half of the twentieth century, and providing unique insight into one of the most fertile periods in American art.