1939 - Art

Art

New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) moves in May into a handsome new building at 11 West 53rd Street with an exhibition entitled "Art in Our Time" (see 1932). Designed by Philip Goodwin and Edward Durrell Stone, the building replaces the nine-story town house of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and stands out from its town house neighbors. Rockefeller has no taste for contemporary art but has contributed $6 million toward construction of the new museum to please his wife, Abby, on condition that they move into an apartment. The museum will expand in 1951, 1964, 1985, and thereafter.

Grandma Moses gains overnight fame after engineer-art collector Louis Caldor sees work by the primitivist Anna Mary Robertson Moses, 79, displayed in a drugstore window at Hoosick Falls, N.Y. Caldor drives to Robertson's farm, buys all 15 of her paintings, and exhibits three of them at the new Museum of Modern Art in a show entitled "Contemporary Unknown Painters."

Other paintings: Seated Man by Dutch-born New York painter Willem de Kooning, 35; Ubermut by Paul Klee; Woman Leaning on Her Elbows, Woman in a Red Armchair, Portrait of Jaime Sabartés, and Cat and Bird by Pablo Picasso; Poison and Objective Stimulation by René Magritte; Rythme No. 5 by Sonia Delaunay; Persephone, Susannah and the Elders, Threshing Wheat, and Weighing Cotton by Thomas Hart Benton; Three Men (tempera) and Handball by Ben Shahn; The Brooklyn Bridge: Variations on an Old Theme by Joseph Stella; The Dessert by Milton Avery; Retrato de Pita Amor by Diego Rivera; Marbles Champion by Norman Rockwell (cover illustration, Saturday Evening Post, August 2; Rockwell has been using neighbors at Arlington, Vt., as models). Art dealer Joseph Duveen, Baron Duveen (of Millbank), dies at London May 25 at age 69, having persuaded U.S. collectors who included Benjamin Altman, Henry Clay Frick, Henry Huntington, Samuel H. Kress, Andrew Mellon, John D. Rockefeller, and Joseph E. Widener to buy old masters; art dealer Ambroise Vollard dies at Versailles July 21 at age 72 following a motor accident; painter Gwen John falls ill, takes the boat train to Dieppe, collapses on arrival, and dies September 18 at age 63.

German authorities imprison painter-engraver Otto Dix on charges of having conspired in an attempted assassination of Adolf Hitler. Now 48, his antiwar paintings and drawings have aroused the ire of the Nazis, who have ousted him from his position as professor at the Academy in Dresden, canceled his membership in the Prussian Academy, and prevented him from exhibiting his work; Dix will be drafted into the home guard at age 53, captured by the French, and released.

Sculpture: Juggler by Marino Marini.