sculpture, Untitled (for you, Leo, in long respect and affection)
4. It’s constructed of yellow and blue fluorescent
fixtures that span the 90-degree angle of a gallery
corner and the colored lights coalesce to create a vibrantly active space. Additionally, a video and sound
installation by Nauman will also be unveiled. Studio
Mix celebrates finger exercises that the composer
Béla Bartók wrote for children. A video suspended
in a dark gallery shows Nauman’s hands reproducing combinations of four fingers and a thumb while
sounds, including the artist’s voice, are played. Auping noted that he acquired the latter piece because it
seemed especially fitting for the city that hosts the
world-renowned Van Cliburn International Piano
Competition.
Yet another addition to the collection is a specially commissioned work by Jenny Holzer. It utilizes
her signature kinesthetic light-emitting diode (LED)
signs to deliver controversial texts in “Ando blue.”
Among a cache of new “truisms,” she’ll also use a
few she’s already made famous: Money Creates Taste;
Your Oldest Fears are Your Worst Ones; Slipping into Madness is Good for Comparison; Mothers Shouldn’t Make Too
Many Sacrifices; and Lack of Charisma Can be Fatal. The
whole piece will operate as a literal river of glowing language that extends from one end of a large
clerestory gallery to a glass wall at the edge of the
museum’s pond. Thus, Holzer’s text will create the
illusion of penetrating and traveling through water.
Her work will be unveiled—no doubt amid delighted
gasps—during a gala celebration in December.
While reflecting upon the upcoming anniversary,
it would be an unforgivable omission to fail to note
that the Modern is — surprisingly — the oldest mu-
seum in Texas and one of the oldest museums in the
Western United States. In 1892 a charter was granted
to the Fort Worth Public Library and Art Gallery, an
achievement that was the result of twenty dedicated
women wanting to bring culture to what was then a
rough town running desperately thin with regard to
culture. Their first acquisition was Approaching Storm
by the well-known American artist, George Inness.
In the ‘40s the museum held a show, then deemed
highly controversial, from the Downtown Gallery in
New York. Artists included Georgia O’Keeffe, Ben
Shahn, and William Blake. Later, works by Wass-
ily Kandinsky, Ellsworth Kelly, and Pablo Picasso
were added to the collection. In the 1970s, pieces by
Donald Judd, Mark Rothko, Brice Marden, Robert
Rauschenberg, and Jim Dine were purchased. How-
ever, even this impressive litany of names pales when
compared to the entire trove of work acquired during
the intervening years.
Opposite, bottom: Robyn O’Neil, These Final Hours embrace at last; this is our ending, this is our past, 2007, graphite on paper, 83 x 166 ¾ in., Collection of the Modern Art
Museum of Fort Worth, Museum Purchase. Top: Dan Flavin, Untitled (for you Leo, in long respect and affection) 4, 1978, pink, green, blue, and yellow fluorescent light, 48 x 48 x
2 in., Collection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Museum Purchase. Above, left: Michael Auping, chief curator. Above, right: Marla Price, director.
