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Open This End: Contemporary Art from the Collection of Blake Byrne

February 19 – July 12, 2015
Jack Pierson, Nothing (Yellow, Blue, Red) (detail), 1992. Mixed media, 54 x 112 x 1 inches (137.2 x 284.5 x 2.5 cm). Collection of Blake Byrne. © Jack Pierson; courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles, and Cheim & Read, New York; photo by Alan Shaffer.
This Andy Warhol print consists of the words
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. Photo by Brian Forrest.

An exhibition of both iconic and lesser-known works from some of the most significant and compelling artists of the last 50 years, Open This End: Contemporary Art from the Collection of Blake Byrne traced a number of intertwined narratives in the history of recent art. These narratives included Pop and Conceptual Art, Minimalism, body-oriented performance art, the Pictures Generation, identity politics and psychologically-inflected figurative works. The exhibition’s title came from a 1962 painting by Andy Warhol, a gift from Blake Byrne to The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the earliest work in the show. Guest curator Joseph R. Wolin utilized the strengths of Byrne’s collection to chart a broad but personal overview of contemporary art, while also providing a window into the collector’s personal vision.

Open This End was organized by guest curator Joseph R. Wolin and sponsored by The Skylark Foundation, Los Angeles, California.The exhibition was on view through July 12 at Duke before traveling to three other university art museums with connections to Byrne’s family: Ohio State University Urban Arts Space in Columbus, Ohio (August 25 – November 7, 2015), The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University in New York (January 20 – March 12, 2016), The Ronna and Eric Hoffman Gallery of Contemporary Art at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon (September 8 – December 11, 2016).

Please visit The Skylark Foundation for more information.

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