OPEN THIS END: CONTEMPORARY ART FROM THE COLLECTION OF BLAKE BYRNE
This exhibition was drawn from the collection of Blake Byrne (T’57), which he built over the course of 30 years and has enjoyed on the walls of his Hollywood Hills and Paris homes. Open This End featured 68 works spanning five decades, including those by iconoclastic artists John Baldessari, Cindy Sherman, Ed Ruscha and Andy Warhol, alongside acclaimed younger artists Thomas Houseago, Wangechi Mutu and Kehinde Wiley. More than half of the works were promised gifts to the Nasher Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles. The exhibition was organized by Joseph R. Wolin, an independent curator and art critic in New York.
The exhibition traveled to three other university art museums with connections to Byrne’s family: Ohio State University Urban Arts Space in Columbus, Ohio; the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University in New York; and the Ronna and Eric Hoffman Gallery of Contemporary Art at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore.
Open This End was organized by guest curator Joseph R. Wolin and sponsored by The Skylark Foundation, Los Angeles, California.
Andy Warhol, Open This End (detail), 1962. Acrylic on canvas, 8 x 11 inches (20.32 x 27.94 cm). Collection of Blake Byrne, T’57, partial and promised gift to The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles. Image courtesy of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. © 2014 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, New York.
Photos in order of appearance: Duke students take a closer look at Deborah Grant’s 2007 work, In the Land of the Blind the Blue Eye Man is King from the series By the Skin of Our Teeth. Chief Curator Trevor Schoonmaker leads a gallery talk through Sound Vision. Gallery installation photo by Peter Paul Geoffrion. All other photos by J Caldwell.
