The William S. Paley Collection

The format is approximately 9.5 inches by 12.25 inches. xi, [1], 180 pages. Illustrations (234, 73 in color). The dust jacket has some wear, tears and soiling. Illustrated dust jacket. This was published in connections with an exhibition of the William S. Paley Collection at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, February 2--May 7, 1992, organized by William Burin, Director emeritus, Department of Painting and Sculpture. Foreword by Richard E. Oldenburg. Preface by William Rubin. Catalogue and Notes. William Stanley Rubin (August 11, 1927 – January 22, 2006) was an American art scholar, a distinguished curator, critic, collector, art historian and teacher of modern art. From 1968 to 1988, Rubin was a curator at The Museum of Modern Art located in New York City and, from 1973 to 1988, he served as director of the Painting and Sculpture Department. He played a key role in building MoMA's collection, in particular acquiring work of abstract expressionism, and organized many groundbreaking exhibitions. Rubin's post at the Museum of Modern Art made him one of the most powerful and influential individuals in the art world of his day, but he eventually realized that it was time for a younger generation to take over, so he retired in 1988. Matthew Armstrong (Columbia General Studies, ‘84) is the former curator of the PaineWebber and UBS art collections and is now a private curator and art advisor. The William S. Paley Collection at The Museum of Modern Art, which constitutes one of the most important private collections to be entrusted to a public institution in recent years, will be shown to the public in its entirety for the first time. Mr. Paley, founder and guiding spirit of CBS and a towering figure in the modern entertainment, communication, and news-dissemination industries, left his collection of more than eighty works of art to the William S. Paley Foundation for donation to The Museum of Modern Art, where he was chairman emeritus at the time of his death in October 1990. This exhibition pays tribute to Mr. Paley’s dedicated service to the Museum over a period of more than half a century. The Paley Collection, which includes paintings, sculpture, and drawings, ranges in date from the latter half of the nineteenth century through the early 1970s. It is especially rich in works by Cezanne, Matisse, and Picasso, and includes as well significant works by Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas, Derain, Bonnard, Gauguin, Rouault, and other modern masters. Among the pieces on view in the exhibition are Gauguin’s splendid The Seed of the Areoi (Te aa no areois) (1892), an important female nude from the artist’s first sojourn in Tahiti; Cezanne’s superb Milk Can and Apples (1879–80); a large and exquisite late pastel by Degas, Two Dancers (1905); Derain’s dynamic Fauve painting Bridge over the Riou (1906); Picasso’s celebrated monumental painting Boy Leading a Horse (1905–06); and Matisse’s striking masterpiece from his years in Nice, Woman with a Veil (1927). Many of the pieces in the collection fill important gaps in the Museum’s collection, while others further enrich areas of strength. The William S. Paley Collection is a highly personal one, built according to the dictates of private taste rather than to any more public concerns. As William Rubin notes in his preface to the catalogue accompanying the exhibition, in the middle 1930s, when William Paley bought many of his paintings, "…there were relatively few collectors of modern art—and nothing chic about possessing it." Mr. Paley’s passion for art made his collection a fundamental component of his private world. The works are, for the most part, intimate in both format and character, scaled for personal enjoyment and contemplation. Mr. Paley’s affiliation with The Museum of Modern art commenced in 1937, only eight years after the Museum was founded. He served successively as trustee, chairman of the Painting and Sculpture Committee, president of the Museum, and chairman of the Board, under whom t.…