Now on view at the Seattle Museum of Art, Seattle, WA is "Twentieth-Century Art: The Ebsworth Collection." The exhibition was organized by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. where it was initially shown. The Seattle Museum of Art, where the collection will be on view through November 12, is the exhibit's only other venue.

The Ebsworth collection includes over seventy works dating from 1913 through the late 1960s. Included are impressive pieces by Alexander Calder, Willem de Kooning, Arthur Dove, David Hockney, Edward Hopper, Jasper Johns, Jackson Pollock, and Georgia O'Keeffe. In many cases, the examples on view reveal the influence of European art on the American modernist movement. This European influence was first introduced to the American artists, on a grand scale, at the 1913 Armory Show in New York. Other influences revealed through the collection are industrialism and commercialism; Warhol's Campbell's Soup Can with Can Opener, 1962 (see image) is one example of his modernist notion of combining serialized images of pop art with commercialism.

Barney A. Ebsworth: the collector
Listed as one of the world's top 100-200 collectors of American art, Barney A. Ebsworth has been collecting for 30 years. Ebsworth, a retired travel executive, had his first brush with the art world in Paris where he was stationed during the Korean War - he apparently spent every weekend at the Louvre!

Ebsworth and his wife Pam are both very active in the museum community. Barney Ebsworth has served on the National Gallery's Trustee Council and co-chaired its Collectors Committee since 1996; Pam is on the board of the Seattle Art Museum. When asked about his future plans for the collection Ebsworth stated, "I'm not going to sell them, that's for sure." Ebsworth has already made generous donations to the St. Louis Art Museum, the Honolulu Academy of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Seattle Art Museum.

In conjunction with the exhibit, a half-day symposium, "Multiple Pathways to American Modernism," will be held at the Seattle Art Museum on October 21. Topics of discussion will include not only fine art and its central figures, but also music, literature, and criticism of the period. Guest speakers will include Barbara Haskell, curator of painting and sculpture at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Please contact the museum for further information.

By Allie J. O'Brien