US National Gallery of Art receives trove of Modern and contemporary drawings

The National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington, DC, has received a gift of more than 60 Modern and contemporary works, the lion’s share of them drawings and works on paper. The donation comes from the gallery’s Los Angeles-based benefactors of many years Lenore and Bernard Greenberg, both of whom have served on the NGA’s Collectors Committee for almost two decades; Lenore also served on its Trustees’ Council for 12 years.

The gifted works on paper include the first Bruce Nauman drawing to enter the NGA’s collection, the large-scale 1983 work Dream Reaper, as well as two charcoal drawings by Susan Rothenburg, both from 1984. Also included are two drawings by Philip Guston: Untitled (1953), representing the early abstract era of his oeuvre, and Dawn (1980), made the year he died and featuring hallmarks of his later return to figurative imagery. Also in the gift is a preparatory sketch Ed Ruscha made for his famous painting OOF in 1962, making it the earliest drawing by the artist in the NGA’s collection, which includes more than 100 works by Ruscha.

“The works included in the Greenberg collection are transformative for the museum’s collection,” Kaywin Feldman, the gallery’s director, said in a statement. “With keen discernment and immense care they built an extraordinary collection which will delight visitors for generations to come.”

Other works on paper gifted by the Greenbergs include pieces by Vija Celmins, Alberto Giacometti, Franz Kline, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Willem de Kooning, Shahzia Sikander, Cy Twombly and others. The gift also includes photographs by Roni Horn, John Baldessari, Uta Barth and Hiroshi Sugimoto, plus a wire sculpture by Alexander Calder, The Acrobats (1929).

Lenore Greenberg—whose mother Rita Schreiber donated important works by Constantin Brânçusi, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso to the NGA—is also a life trustee of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, whose board she has served on since 1981. Bernard Greenberg, who has long maintained a law practice in Beverly Hills, has served on the board of both Los Angeles Opera and the Los Angeles Music Center.

The Greenbergs’ gift comes at a moment when the NGA and other arts institutions in the US capital are under close scrutiny from the administration of President Donald Trump, from the National Archives to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Several of the Smithsonian Institution’s museums in the city have been targeted by Trump’s executive orders and attempts to stretch the reach of his executive powers—as in his recent claim that he had fired the director of the National Portrait Gallery, which the Smithsonian politely pointed out he did not have the authority to do.

On the first day of his second term, Trump signed an executive order barring diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in the federal government and at federally funded agencies; the Smithsonian and NGA both quickly complied and shut down their diversity offices.