Press Release
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“This gift is unprecedented in its scale and quality, and these works will further define the New
Bruce as a museum that explores global stories of Modern and Contemporary art,” said Robert
Wolterstorff, the Bruce Museum’s Susan E. Lynch Executive Director and CEO. “We are
profoundly grateful to the donors of these magnificent works, who have actively supported the
Greenwich community for decades and now can be assured that their generosity will inspire and
educate generations to come.”
Coming at a transformative moment for the Bruce Museum, the announcement of the promised
collection accompanies a substantial leadership grant the donors have made to the New Bruce
building campaign. The $60 million renovation and expansion project will double the size of the
existing building and create new, modern, and spacious galleries for exhibitions and
installations, as well as state-of-the art spaces for education and community events.
The New Bruce is scheduled to open in March 2023, with the addition of more than 12,000
square feet of gallery space in the William L. Richter Art Wing, including a 4,500-square-foot
gallery for changing exhibitions and five new galleries for the growing permanent art collection.
The Museum’s Curator of Art, Margarita Karasoulas, who joined the Bruce in November after
previously serving as Assistant Curator of American Art at the Brooklyn Museum, will organize
an installation of select loaned works from the gift to celebrate the grand opening of the New
Bruce. At the time of the gift’s fulfillment, the works will be exhibited in a dedicated gallery in the
Museum’s Richter Art Wing.
Seen as a whole, the collection principally focuses on the European and American figural
tradition from the 1870s to the 1990s, beginning with Winslow Homer’s watercolors Boy on
Dock (1873) and Fishergirls Coiling Tackle (1881), the latter from his important Cullercoats
series, and ending with Andrew Wyeth’s watercolor Cape May (1992). Andrew Wyeth is also
represented by two tempera paintings—Sheepskin (1973), from his famous Helga series, and
The Huntress (1978), a light-filled interior depicting another model, Siri Erickson. These are
complemented by outstanding watercolors and graphite drawings by the artist.
Among the works in the collection are singular masterpieces. Edward Hopper’s Two Comedians
(1966), the artist’s last work, depicts the painter and his wife Josephine dressed as clowns, or
commedia dell’arte characters, on stage against a darkened backdrop. A second Hopper oil,
Bridle Path (1939) shows a trio of riders in Central Park. Another highlight of the collection is
Mary Cassatt’s Two Little Sisters (c. 1901-02), which is complemented by a group of Cassatt’s
highly important color etchings with aquatint, which stand as icons of graphic art, revolutionary
works that translated the aesthetic of Japanese color prints into the Impressionist idiom.
Included are works by the French Impressionist master Camille Pissarro, notably Le Marché de
Gisors, Grande-Rue (The Market of Gisors, on the Grande-Rue, 1885) and Fenaison à Éragny
(Haymaking at Éragny, 1891), both created during the years when Pissarro was most influenced
by the pointillist technique of his friend Georges Seurat.
The collection is particularly strong in sculpture, including Alberto Giacometti’s Femme Assise
(Seated Woman, 1956); several sculptures in various media by Elie Nadelman, including Circus