Pearlman Collection gifts to Brooklyn Museum, LACMA, and MoMA - Upcoming Exhibitions

Pearlman Collection gifts to the Brooklyn Museum, the LACMA, and the MoMA 

Upcoming Exhibitions at the three museums

Amedeo Modigliani 

Jean Cocteau, 1916

Promised gift from the Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation 

to the Brooklyn Museum

Photo by Bruce White

Vincent van Gogh

Tarascon Stagecoach, 1888 

Promised gift from the Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation 

to the LACMA

Photo by Bruce White

Paul Cézanne 

Mont Sainte-Victoire, c. 1904–06 

Promised gift from the Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation 

to the MoMA

Photo by Bruce White

The Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation entire collection will be gifted to three major institutions: the Brooklyn Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Comprising an exceptional group of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and modern artworks, the Pearlman Collection will be gifted across the three institutions in a novel sharing arrangement that will enhance access to larger and more diverse audiences through continually changing contexts.

In recognition of Henry and Rose’s generous spirit, the collection will travel as an exhibition before being placed under the care of the respective institutions. From February to July 2026, the exhibition Village Square: Gifts of Modern Art from the Pearlman Collection to the Brooklyn Museum, LACMA, and MoMA will be on view at LACMA, and in the fall of 2026 the collection will travel to the Brooklyn Museum. In the near future, MoMA will also present an exhibition of the Pearlman gifts.

Henry Pearlman (1895–1974) began purchasing avant-garde art in 1945 with a landscape by Chaïm Soutine, which led to a selfguided education in 19th- and 20th-century European art and a passion for collecting that endured for the rest of his life. From the very start of this collection, he and his wife, Rose, maintained a fundamental interest in sharing their experience of art as widely as possible, instilling populist values in their children and grandchildren that are the Foundation’s inspiration for making this extraordinary gift. 

As part of this gift, 29 works will join the Brooklyn Museum’s collection, with exceptional paintings and sculpture by Chaïm Soutine, Paul Gauguin, Edgar Degas, and Amedeo Modigliani, including the latter’s 1916 portrait Jean Cocteau and an extremely rare limestone sculpture, Head (c. 1910–11); LACMA will receive six works, including Edouard Manet’s Young Woman in a Round Hat (c. 1877–79), and Vincent van Gogh’s Tarascon Stagecoach from 1888, the first paintings by either artist to enter the collection; and MoMA will receive 28 works, with a primary focus on Paul Cézanne, including the paintings Mont Sainte-Victoire (1904–06), and Cistern in the Park of Château Noir (c. 1900), as well as 15 of Cézanne’s most luminous watercolors.

“For years we have explored every model we could imagine for the future ownership and guardianship of this collection,” explained Daniel Edelman, President of the Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation. “We ultimately chose the Brooklyn Museum for the works that tell Henry’s story of discovery and for its commitment to engaging a diverse community; LACMA for works that specifically enhance their ability to innovate around bringing art to where people are; and MoMA, where Cézanne’s works on paper will be shared and cared for by one of the finest departments of drawings and prints that we know, as well as a half dozen of his paintings that together support the artist’s foundational role in the story of modern art. With very different collections, communities, and presentations of art, these three great institutions share an understanding that museums, their audiences, and how those audiences engage with art, are constantly changing. All three are committed to leading that challenge and inspiring others to meet it as well.

“Rather than put conditions on the gift that would become limiting in a future that none of us can know, we created a set of guidelines to encourage these three institutions to collaborate on a flexible movement of the art among them. Our aim is to bring these major works to new audiences, allowing them to be seen in different contexts, reuniting our collection’s works with one another on a regular basis, and perhaps even inspiring collectors and museums to consider new models for ownership of art.”

“We’re thrilled to welcome this extraordinary gift from the Pearlman Collection—the most significant addition to our European art holdings in nearly a century,” said Anne Pasternak, Shelby White and Leon Levy Director of the Brooklyn Museum. “Henry Pearlman collected with the public in mind, believing that modern art should inspire audiences of all backgrounds. Between 1960 and 1986, the Brooklyn Museum presented six exhibitions dedicated to the collection, and now, nearly 40 years after the last of those presentations, we’re honored to give a group of these masterworks a permanent home in the borough where the Pearlman family grew up. As important, we are excited by the Foundation’s strategy of collection sharing with our wonderful peers, MoMA and LACMA.”

“LACMA is deeply grateful to welcome these masterpieces to the museum’s collection, and especially for van Gogh and Manet, two towering figures of 19th-century art, whose paintings will be represented in our collection for the first time,” said Michael Govan, LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director. “It is also an honor to help fulfill Henry and Rose’s wish to share their collection with our vast public, together with the Brooklyn Museum and MoMA. We look forward to presenting the collection to LACMA’s visitors in an upcoming exhibition next year, as well as in future exhibitions at LACMA and our colleague institutions both locally and around the world.”

“This generous gift significantly expands MoMA’s collection of works by Paul Cézanne and Edgar Degas, and underscores the enduring legacy of Henry and Rose’s vision,” said Glenn D. Lowry, The David Rockefeller Director of The Museum of Modern Art. “We are honored to work with our colleagues in Los Angeles and Brooklyn to ensure that the Pearlmans’ commitment to research, scholarship and access, and their belief in the artists they acquired will continue to inspire the public now and in the future.”

About the Pearlman Foundation

Since 1976, the Henry and Rose Pearlman Collection has remained on long-term loan at the Princeton University Art Museum. While in the Art Museum’s care, and in collaboration with the Foundation, there have been three traveling shows of the collection, some 500 individual loans of artworks to exhibitions across the globe, and two tour publications, including a recent one offered online and free to the public.

Meanwhile the Foundation created a website that allows high resolution viewing of works, including those that can’t always be on exhibition. It supported the digitalization of the history of the collection by the American Archives of American Art and its availability online. And it encouraged proactive lending, offering individual and small groupings of works to museums to exhibit within their permanent collection galleries.

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art

5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA, 90036

www.lacma.org

Treasures of Modern Art: The Legacy of Phyllis Wattis at SFMOMA, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Treasures of Modern Art: The Legacy of Phyllis Wattis at SFMOMA

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art 

January 30 - June 24, 2003

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) presents Treasures of Modern Art: The Legacy of Phyllis Wattis at SFMOMA. This special exhibition highlights and celebrates works of art acquired by SFMOMA due to the vision and generosity of devoted trustee and patron, Phyllis Wattis, who passed away in June 2002 at the age of 97. The exhibition features more than 80 of her most important gifts—including works by Robert Rauschenberg, Piet Mondrian, René Magritte, Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, and Barnett Newman, among others—offering a unique look at the lasting impact Phyllis Wattis had on SFMOMA. It focuses on works acquired between the years 1995 and 2002, the most significant period of Wattis’s philanthropic activity.  Treasures of Modern Art: The Legacy of Phyllis Wattis at SFMOMA is an exclusive SFMOMA presentation; the exhibition is co-organized by Madeleine Grynsztejn, the Elise S. Haas Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture, and John S. Weber, the Leanne and George Roberts Curator of Education and Public Programs. 

Phyllis Wattis received national recognition late in life as her gifts of major works of contemporary and modern art helped transform the Museum’s permanent collection. Leading the way for SFMOMA’s unprecedented acquisition campaign of the late 1990s, Wattis worked closely with SFMOMA’s curatorial staff to acquire works that would have an immediate impact on the collection and its significance in the art world. Wattis keyed her donations to the collection’s gaps and needs, always asking the SFMOMA curatorial staff whether a proposed acquisition was of such importance that it could, in and of itself, spark a museum visit. In Phyllis Wattis’ words, taking a cue from the Michelin travel guides, she wanted to bring artworks to SFMOMA that would rank as “Four Stars, Worth a Detour.”

“SFMOMA owes a great debt to Phyllis Wattis. Her gifts have come to occupy key places in the art historical narrative the Museum presents,” states Madeleine Grynsztejn. “The caliber of the more than 80 works in this exhibition speaks to Mrs. Wattis’s belief that the Museum’s collection should be built around masterpieces and we’re excited by the opportunity to see them all together. Phyllis was one of those rare individuals whose vision made a difference to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and to the cultural life of San Francisco.”

The following are among the most significant works featured in the exhibition:

Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, 1917/1964, one of the 20th century’s most iconic and controversial works of art, is a cornerstone of SFMOMA’s permanent collection. An edition produced in 1964 by the artist and the Milanese scholar/collector Arturo Schwartz from the destroyed 1917 original, Fountain is the first of Duchamp’s “ready-made” objects to enter the SFMOMA collection.

Red Liz, 1963 (also titled Liz No. 6), by Andy Warhol, is a classic early portrait of Elizabeth Taylor, painted in lavender, black and turquoise against a stunning red background. It is among the signature portraits Warhol created of such celebrities as Taylor, Jacqueline Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe. 

Les valeurs personelles (Personal Values), 1952, a painting from René Magritte’s mid-career, displays the signature style of the artist in one of his most extraordinary and refined images. Les valeurs personelles is one of the artist’s seminal works and includes many of the objects we associate with Magritte: the cloud-filled sky, the goblet, the box-like interior space with a crack in the ceiling. The painting creates the sensation that we are standing in an ambiguous space that is both open and confining, creating a sense of radical change in scale that represents one of the most potent aspects of Magritte’s works.

The donation of 14 iconic works by Robert Rauschenberg, purchased by Phyllis Wattis directly from the artist, made SFMOMA a destination point for lovers of postwar art. Included among those gifted are Erased de Kooning Drawing, 1953; Automobile Tire Print, 1953; and an accompanying group of key early paintings, sculptures and photographs. These works give SFMOMA an unmatched range and depth in Rauschenberg’s work. Phyllis Wattis developed a friendship with the artist during this period and they remained in contact until her death.

Phyllis Wattis: “The Patron Saint of San Francisco Arts”

Phyllis Cannon Wattis, a great granddaughter of Brigham Young, was born in 1905 in Salt Lake City, Utah. She was the daughter of a sugar company executive and the third of six children. Raised in Salt Lake City, she started college at the University of Utah and moved in 1927 to attend UC Berkeley, where she graduated with a degree in Economics. Following graduation, she returned to Salt Lake City and met Paul Wattis, whose father was a founder of the Utah Construction Company. They were married in 1934 and three years later moved to San Francisco, where they raised two children.

Phyllis Wattis became interested in art relatively late in life. Though she first visited SFMOMA in the 1940s, it wasn’t until 1964, while visiting the international art exhibition Documenta in Kassel, that her interest in modern art developed. 

In 1958 the couple established the Paul L. and Phyllis Wattis Foundation to formalize their philanthropic activities, which were aimed at educational, artistic and scientific Bay Area institutions. After 30 years, Phyllis Wattis dissolved the organization and promptly gave $26 million to several Bay Area institutions, including $5 million to SFMOMA’s New Building Campaign.

Phyllis Wattis served as a Trustee of SFMOMA beginning in 1973 and was elected a Lifetime Trustee in 1988.

Treasures of Modern Art: The Legacy of Phyllis Wattis at SFMOMA is organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

www.sfmoma.org