Ellsworth Kelly

Centennial

A multi-faceted celebration of the May 31, 2023 Centennial of Ellsworth Kelly’s birth (1923- 2015) throughout 2023. The celebration will include exhibitions, new publications, multiple gifts of artworks to museums, grant awards from the EK Foundation, new digital and communications initiatives, and special events for museum directors/curators, art world VIPs and the local community.









Exhibitions

Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY: permanent collection installations

The iconic Sculpture for a Large Wall, 1956-57, along with two other iconic paintings from the collection, Spectrum IV, 1967, and Chatham VI 1971, will be installed in the Marron Atrium: February 3 – June 11, 2023
Ellsworth Kelly’s Sketchbooks, a small, year-long, rotating exhibition of sketchbooks recently gifted to the museum, in conversation with drawings and paintings from the permanent collection, will be installed in the 4th Floor Collection Galleries: February 3, 2023 – February 2024
MoMA is also publishing a facsimile edition of Ellsworth’s Sketchbook #26; all proceeds will benefit the Department of Drawings and Prints

Glenstone Museum, Potomac, MD: Ellsworth Kelly

Encyclopedic exhibition of over 70 artworks including painting, sculpture, works on paper, and photographs
Three venues are confirmed:
Glenstone Museum, Potomac, Maryland: May 4, 2023 – March 17, 2024
Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France: May 9, 2024 – September 2, 2024
Fire Station, Doha, Qatar: October 24, 2024 – February 25, 2025
A fourth venue in Beijing, China is being negotiated for 2025

Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL: Ellsworth Kelly Portrait Drawings

July 1 – October 23, 2023
A survey of portrait drawings, with works dating from 1944 to 2002
Features 94 works, many of which have not been previously exhibited

La Fondazione Roma, Rome, Italy, Ellsworth Kelly: Linea, Forma, Colore (Line, Form, Color)

April 14, 2023 – July 11, 2023
Exhibition of Ellsworth’s plant drawings in series and painted wall sculptures, curated by Jack Shear

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Ellsworth Kelly: Reflection on Water and other early drawings

Opens April 22, 2023
To celebrate Ellsworth’s centennial, the PMA has received an extraordinary group of eighteen drawings that reveal how the artist was inspired by nature and the world around him to conjure a singular form of abstract art
Works are gift of Jack Shear in honor of Ellsworth Kelly’s centennial
In permanent collection galleries 272 and 275

Lever House, New York, NY: Ellsworth Kelly Sculpture

Features indoor and outdoor sculpture and relief works
Inaugural exhibition at the newly restored Lever House, the architecturally significant mid-century office tower on Park Avenue
Opens late April or early May 2023, exact dates TBC, for one year

Edward Hopper House, Nyack, NY: The Rivers

June 29 – October 20, 2023
An exhibition of lithographs and related works from Ellsworth’s Rivers series

Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles, CA and New York, NY: Ellsworth Kelly at Gemini: An Exploration of Color

Two concurrent exhibitions, at Gemini G.E.L. in Los Angeles and Gemini G.E.L. at Joni Weyl in New York July 15 – September 15, 2023
These shows will examine the finesse and subtlety with which Ellsworth used his Gemini collaborations to explore single color variations – namely red, yellow, blue and green

Santa Barbara Museum of Art: Shape, Ground, Shadow: Ellsworth Kelly Photographs

October 15, 2023 – January 14, 2024
Features 40 photographs, 4-6 wall reliefs, and 12-15 prints
This exhibition will be the first of Kelly’s photographs on the West coast and among the first anywhere to place Kelly’s work in photography in relation to his other forms of his art

Digital Initiatives

EK100 Project

Instagram

Facebook

TikTok

Community Events

A series of local events will be hosted in Columbia county in May 2023, the rural area of New York where Ellsworth lived and worked for over forty years. These events provide the local community a chance to celebrate a hometown hero and shine a spotlight on Ellsworth’s legacy of philanthropy to local cultural organizations, historic preservation projects, arts-in-education in local public schools, and the protection of natural resources:

  • Vertical banners celebrating Ellsworth’s centennial to appear on Main Street and civic buildings in Spencertown NY

  • Exhibition of Ellsworth Kelly Posters and Reception at Spencertown Academy Arts Center April 27 – May 18, 2023, reception May 7, 2023

    A survey exhibition of Ellsworth’s framed exhibition posters from across the globe, 1950s-present , illustrating the the breadth and depth of Ellsworth’s remarkable 70-year career will be on view at a community arts center.

    Exhibition will be open to general public

  • Dedication of Austerlitz Town Hall Saturday, May 20th

    The Town of Austerlitz will honor Ellsworth Kelly in a special dedication ceremony at the Town Hall in Spencertown. The Town Hall building was erected in 1836 as the Spencertown Methodist Episcopal Church. The Ellsworth Kelly Foundation purchased the building for the town and funded a complete restoration

    Ceremony and open house for residents to see the interior of the building, which is not open to the public

  • Public Open Studio Tour of Ellsworth Kelly Studio May 20, 2023

    The community will be invited to an open house at the Ellsworth Kelly Studio to tour the studio and view exhibitions of rarely seen work and ephemera curated especially for the centennial.

    Free and open to the public by timed ticket reservations

  • Birdwatching with art historian Roberta Bernstein

    Details to come

  • Free screening of “Ellsworth Kelly: Fragments” (2007) Crandell Theatre, Chatham Sunday May 21, Time TBC

    A conversation with Jack Shear and filmmaker Edward Howard will follow the screening

Gifts

In honor of Ellsworth’s Centennial, Jack Shear has made major gifts of works on paper to four key institutions of 20-30 works each:

  1. Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL

  2. Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

  3. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

  4. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA

At Jack’s invitation, these gifts were selected by the institutions to fill gaps in their respective permanent holdings of Ellsworth’s work Smaller gifts—but significant for those institutions receiving them—were made by Jack Shear to fifteen other U.S. museums. Each gift comprises 2-5 drawings or works on paper, selected by Jack to complement each institutions’ permanent holdings of Ellsworth’s work:

  1. Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX

  2. Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

  3. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY

  4. Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA

  5. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA

  6. The Menil Collection, Houston, TX

  7. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

  8. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston, MA

  9. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, TX

  10. The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY

  11. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

  12. Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis, MO

  13. Tang Teaching Museum & Art Gallery, Saratoga Springs, NY

  14. Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN

  15. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

The following 31 museums will receive smaller gifts of artwork (confirmed March 9, 2023)–HAVE NOT YET BEEN NOTIFIED

  1. Addison Gallery of American Art

  2. Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts

  3. Baltimore Museum of Art

  4. Broad Museum, The

  5. Buffalo-AKG Art Museum

  6. Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University

  7. Carnegie Museum of Art

  8. Cincinnati Art Museum

  9. Dallas Museum of Art

  10. Des Moines Art Center

  11. Detroit Institute of Arts

  12. High Museum of Art

  13. Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden

  14. Hood Museum of Art (Dartmouth)

  15. Milwaukee Art Museum

  16. Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

  17. Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

  18. Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego

  19. Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

  20. Neuberger Museum of Art

  21. Norton Simon Museum

  22. Phillips Collection, The

  23. RISD Museum

  24. Rose Art Museum

  25. Seattle Art Museum

  26. Smithsonian American Art Museum

  27. University of Oregon Schnitzer Museum of Art

  28. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

  29. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art

  30. Worcester Art Museum

  31. Yale University Art Gallery

Grants

In honor of the Centennial the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation made fifteen x $50,000 unrestricted general operating grants totaling $750,000 to the same fifteen institutions listed above which received the smaller artwork gifts

Additional grants confirmed as of March 9, 2023 (institutions have not yet been notified)

4 grants x $100,000 each to Art Institute of Chicago, MoMA, PMA, SFMOMA

31 grants x $50,000 each to 31 additional museums (list above)

TOTAL centennial grants (including the 15 x $50,000 grants made in 2022) = 50 museums totaling $2,700,000

Other grants made at March 9 meeting:

6 grants x $10,000 each to the six local Columbia County arts in education programs

Press

Centennial press release

Click HERE for Press Kit materials

© ELLSWORTH KELLY FOUNDATION

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