HARVARD UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUMS INAUGURATES GALLERY SPACE DEDICATED TO MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART

Sert Gallery housed in only Le Corbusier building in North America

Cambridge, MA—June 22, 2000—On June 8, the newly renovated Sert Gallery opened to provide increased gallery space for modern and contemporary art at the Harvard University Art Museums. The result of a collaboration between the Art Museums and the department of Visual and Environmental Studies (VES), the Sert Gallery builds upon the Art Museums commitment to programming and scholarship in the areas of modern and contemporary art. Both the Gallery and the department of VES are adjacent to the Fogg and Busch-Reisinger Museums, and are located within the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts (CCVA), the only building in North America designed by Le Corbusier.

"The creation of the Sert Gallery continues the Art Museums tradition of working with other departments in the Harvard community to create new opportunities for teaching and research," said James Cuno, Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard University Art Museums. "This new space furthers our commitment to modern and contemporary art by providing increased opportunities for exhibiting these growing collections."

The Art Museums have actively collected contemporary art since the early twentieth century. Over the years, these holdings have grown significantly, prompting the recent creation of a curatorial department of modern and contemporary art.

Peter Rose, a professor of architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, was selected as the architect of record for the renovation, further extending the intrauniversity collaboration for the project. Rose was the primary architect for Montreal’s celebrated Canadian Center for Architecture, built in 1989; he practices out of a Cambridge office and is highly regarded for his intelligent and rigorous modernist designs.

The refurbished gallery occupies the space of the original Sert Gallery, named for Josep Lluis Sert, former chairman of the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Sert oversaw the building’s construction in 1963. At 1,200 square feet, the gallery is a pure geometric form—a rectangle—balanced within Le Corbusier’s overall grid design. The principal architectural challenge of the renovation was to create a clear and individual identity for the gallery, while respecting one of North America’s most significant architectural monuments. The new Sert has been designed to accommodate a broad range of media, including painting, sculpture, works on paper, film and video, and installations. The space includes museum-quality HVAC and lighting systems, as well as an adjoining café overlooking the Harvard campus.

"The renovation of the Sert Gallery furthers the department of Visual and Environmental Studies’ longstanding commitment to the education of Harvard students in the visual arts," said Professor Ellen Phelan, Chair of the VES department and Director of the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts. "We are very pleased that the joint efforts of the Art Museums, the department of VES, and our colleague Peter Rose have reinvigorated this space where exhibitions can both supplement and complement the pedagogical goals of the department and broaden the awareness of contemporary art among the larger Harvard community.

Landmark Pictures: Ed Ruscha and Andreas Gursky (Part 2, June 8–July 16), an exhibition exploring two approaches to landscape photography by artists well known for their large-scale images of recognizable sites, inaugurated the newly renovated space. Upcoming exhibitions will include Daido Moriyama: Stray Dog, August 5–November 5; Extreme Connoisseurship, February 3–April 29, 2001; and a student exhibition, May 12–June 10, 2001. The CCVA will also continue to present small-scale exhibitions in the lobby gallery of the building.

A second component of the renovation project is the conversion of the Linden Street building squash court into studio space for VES students, who previously used the Sert Gallery as studio space.

Harvard University Art Museums
The Harvard University Art Museums comprise one of the leading art institutions in the United States and the world, distinguished by the range and depth of the collections as well as by groundbreaking exhibitions and original research. For more than a century the Museums have been the nation’s premier training ground for museum professionals and scholars, renowned for developing the discipline of art history in this country.

The three Harvard University Art Museums—the Fogg Art Museum, the Busch-Reisinger Museum, and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum—are all outstanding institutions in their respective fields. The Fogg also houses the Straus Center for Conservation, a leader in the research and development of scientific and technology-based analysis of art. The 150,000 objects in the Museums’ collections range in date from ancient times to the present, and come from Europe, North America, North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. Each Museum also has an active program of special exhibitions to promote new scholarship in its respective areas of focus.

As an integral component of the Harvard University community, the Art Museums serve as a resource for all students, adding a special dimension not only to their study but to their lives both inside and outside of Harvard. The Art Museums also welcome the public to experience the collections and special exhibitions, and to enjoy lectures, symposia, and other programs.

The collections are divided among ten curatorial areas (Ancient and Byzantine Art and Numismatics; Architecture and Design; Asian Art; Busch-Reisinger Museum; Drawings; Islamic and Later Indian Art; Modern and Contemporary Art; Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts; Prints; and Photographs) and are encyclopedic within their fields. Developed with an emphasis on their value for teaching and research, these holdings are unique in their breadth and quality, and are enhanced continually through gifts and acquisitions. Together, they comprise one of the finest university art collections in the world, with resources rivaling those of major public museums.