What's Happening

摘要

Anni and Josef Albers, two of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, avidly collected ancient artworks of Latin America between 1935 and 1967. This exhibition looks at how that collection influenced their teaching and aesthetic sense. The couple first became interested in pre-Hispanic textiles and ceramics while still living in Germany, before they were forced to flee by the rise of the Nazi Party. Not long after coming to America in 1933, they made their first of many trips to Latin America with Theodore Dreier, the head of Black Mountain College, and his wife. On these trips, they purchased many objects for their collection, adding them to works purchased from art dealers in America and abroad. Today the combination of their own artwork and the objects and textiles they collected numbers more than 1,500 items and is distributed among three collections: the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History holds 1,400 of the pre-Hispanic objects; the Yale Gallery's Harriet Engelhardt Memorial Collection has 100 textiles; and the couple's private collection is held by the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation.