2 Chicago Museums Get 191 Works From Lannan

In the latest move to disperse the Lannan Foundation’s highly regarded contemporary art collection, two Chicago museums announced Tuesday that they will receive large groups of artworks as gifts and purchases from the Los Angeles-based organization.

The Art Institute of Chicago will purchase 48 pieces by modern masters--including Bruce Nauman, Isamu Noguchi, Ad Reinhardt and Sam Francis--and receive 58 works as donations. Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, which made no purchases, will get 85 works as gifts.

The news follows a Jan. 30 announcement of Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art’s windfall of 105 artworks, donated by the foundation.

The three museums were given first choice of about 550 objects available for donation and 53 for sale. They each compiled written proposals, prioritizing choices and explaining how the works would fit their collections. The foundation coordinated the proposals, giving each institution a large percentage of its requests.

The Art Institute had the advantage of having as its liaison attorney and museum trustee Howard M. McCue, who is also counsel to the Lannan Foundation and serves on its board of trustees. The museum came out on top in terms of number of Lannan acquisitions, including purchases of two major Abstract Expressionist paintings--an untitled canvas from 1958 by Clyfford Still and Robert Motherwell’s “Wall Painting With Stripes” from 1944. The institute’s purchases also include 13 paintings and a suite of lithographs by German artist Gerhard Richter and Chuck Close’s portrait of painter Alex Katz, along with 18 related pieces by Close.

Among gifts to the institute are Gary Hill’s 1990 video installation “Inasmuch as It Is Always Already Taking Place”; Richard Artschwager’s 1964 sculpture “Table With Pink Tablecloth”; Mike Kelley’s 1989 mixed-media work “Eviscerated Corpse”; and Vija Celmins’ 1966 painting “Explosion at Sea.”

Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art received large bodies of work and major individual pieces by 27 artists who rose to prominence in the 1970s to ‘90s. Director Kevin E. Consey characterized the bonanza as the second-largest gift of art ever received by the museum, surpassed only by Gerald Elliott’s 1993 bequest of 105 works. But the Lannan situation was unique because “it allowed us to pick great things,” Consey said. “Life should be so sublime all the time.”

Among highlights of the museum’s new works are Mike Kelley’s “Craft Morphology Flow Chart,” the culmination of his series using stuffed dolls; Chris Burden’s massive 1991 sculpture “The Other Vietnam Memorial”; Robert Irwin’s untitled disk from 1965-67, a classic light-and-space sculpture; and an early group of photographs by Cindy Sherman that foreshadow her later development of self-portraiture, masquerade and role-playing themes.