“The Language of Hands” Exhibition
Westwood Gallery
This event has ended.
Curated by James Cavello
WESTWOOD GALLERY NYC presents an extraordinary exhibition of over 100 photographs from the collection of visionary New York philanthropist and collector Henry M. Buhl. The photographs span the history of photography from 19th century pioneers to masters of the 20th century, all exploring the theme of the human hand and its various interpretations.
The collection began in 1993 with Henry Buhl’s purchase of Alfred Stieglitz’s 1920 photograph of Georgia O’Keeffe’s hands. In time, it grew to include over 1,100 photographs. Curated by James Cavello, the exhibition highlights the metaphoric value of hands through diverse images and styles, ranging from surrealist compositions (on view will be Horst P. Horst’s Lisa: Hands with Vase & Flower, 1941, photographs by Pavel Banka, Bill Beckley and György Kepes) to historical photography (Julia Margaret Cameron, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Louise Dahl-Wolfe). Social and civil rights imagery is present in the photographs by Vernoll Coleman, Danny Lyon and Lewis Hine; also on view are portraits of personalities such as Willem de Kooning, photographed by Dan Budnick, and Keith Haring with his artwork, by Claudio Elisabetsky. Among the contemporary masters represented are Mary Ellen Mark, Tetsu Okuhara, Arnold Newman, Klaus Rinke, Dawoud Bey and many others. Due to its commitment to represent a range of artistic styles, the collection is regarded as a unique collector’s example of the vast spectrum of two centuries of photographic art.
A major exhibition of photographs from The Buhl Collection entitled Speaking With Hands was on view at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City in 2004. The exhibition traveled internationally from 2005-7 to venues including the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain, Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany, the State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg and the Moscow Museum of Modern Art. In 2008, an exhibition of both photography and sculpture was on view at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida and from 2009 – 2011 an exhibition of 150 works from the collection toured Asia (on view in museums in Korea, Taiwan and Macao). The 2012 Sotheby’s sale of selected photographs from The Buhl Collection was the largest single-owner sale of a privately owned photography collection, bringing in over $12 million.
Along with being an art collector, Henry Buhl is also an active philanthropist. In 1992, he founded The Buhl Foundation which supports a number of programs including the Association of Community Employment Programs for the Homeless (A.C.E) with programs for job training and placement for homeless men and women.
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Schedule
from September 08, 2017 to October 28, 2017