Post-War American Art comes to Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin

Arnold Newman, Brian O'Doherty and Barbara Novak with their dog Flann O'Brien, 1984, black and white photograph, 32 x 26 cm, The Novak/O'Doherty Collection at IMMA. © Arnold Newman.

An exhibition of 76 artworks by many one of America's leading post-war artists which have been gifted to the IMMA Collection at Dublin by art historian Barbara Novak and artist Brian O’Doherty / Patrick Ireland opened to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 8 September 2010. 

Post-War American Art: The Novak/O’Doherty Collection, donated in association with the American Ireland Fund, comprises paintings and sculpture and an extensive range of works on paper, including watercolours, drawings, photographs and limited edition prints, sculptures and multiples.

This collection includes works by Marcel Duchamp, Edward Hopper and George Segal, Joseph Cornell, Dan Graham, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Christo, Mel Bochner, William Scharf, Peter Hutchinson, Les Levine, Sonja Sekula, John Coplans, Arnold Newman, and Elise Asher.

The donation is particularly rich in works from New York of the 1960s and ‘70s; many the result of friendships and associations with the artists at this time. Through them we see that Barbara Novak and Brian O’Doherty were central figures in the art community of the 1960s and ‘70s and beyond.

Four important works, by Edward Hopper, Marcel Duchamp, George Segal and Jasper Johns, were gifted in 2009. The forthcoming exhibition celebrates the arrival of the balance of their collection to IMMA.