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Louise Nevelson

LOUISE NEVELSON

Collection View: Louise Nevelson Whitney Museum of American Art 9 April–10 August 2025 New York
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Press Release

“I see New York City as a great big sculpture,” Louise Nevelson once remarked. Born in Pereiaslav, Ukraine, Nevelson (1899–1988) lived and worked in Manhattan from the 1920s through the 1980s. Known for her bold monochrome assemblages or stacked and composed found objects, Nevelson was captivated by the city’s ever-changing skyline and saw creative potential in discarded materials that she scavenged throughout its streets at night. By painting these sculptures a single color (black), she cloaked the specific, identifying details of disparate objects such as duck decoys, lettuce crates, and pieces of rebar, transforming them into abstract shapes. Collection View: Louise Nevelson reimagines the relationship between Nevelson’s work and New York, highlighting the dynamic interplay she sought to suggest in her work between motion and stillness, light and shadow, dawn and dusk.

Nevelson had a long and deep relationship with the Whitney Museum, which organized her first retrospective in 1967. Today the Museum is one of the largest repositories of her work, with over ninety sculptures, drawings, and prints in the collection, many of them gifts of the artist. The works gathered in this exhibition, which span four decades, offer a special opportunity to shine a light on this self-proclaimed “architect of shadows.”

Collection View: Louise Nevelson is organized by Kim Conaty, Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator, with Roxanne Smith, Senior Curatorial Assistant, and Antonia Pocock, Curatorial Assistant.

Collection View: Louise Nevelson is part of Outside the Box programming, which is supported by a generous endowment from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation.

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About the Artist

Louise Nevelson (b. 1899, Kiev; d. 1988, New York), a leading sculptor of the twentieth century, pioneered site-specific and installation art. She is recognized for her sculptures comprised of discarded furniture and other wood elements found in the area surrounding her studio.

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About the Gallery

The Whitney Museum of American Art is a landmark cultural institution located in New York‘s vibrant Meatpacking District, at 99 Gansevoort Street. Designed by renowned architect Renzo Piano, the museum’s striking asymmetrical structure integrates cutting-edge architecture with sweeping skyline views and direct access to the High Line, making it an essential destination for anyone interested in American art and culture.

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Address
99 Gansevoort Street
New York
United States
Opening Hours
Monday – Sunday
10:30am – 6pm
Closed Tuesdays
(1)
New York 99 Gansevoort Street
Whitney Museum of American Art contemporary art institution in New York United States
Whitney Museum of American Art
99 Gansevoort Street, New York, United States
+1 (212) 570-3600
http://www.whitney.org

Opening hours
Monday – Sunday
10:30am – 6pm
Closed Tuesdays
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