Exhibition Profile: Richard Pettibone Paints the Rickey Collection

The installation of Miniaturizing Modernism: Richard Pettibone Paints the Rickey Collection is a unique exhibition that is two shows in one –featuring artwork by well-known constructivist artists collected by George Rickey and donated to the Museum, and also showcasing works by Richard Pettibone that were commissioned by the Rickeys based off of their own collection.

Throughout its history, the Neuberger Museum of Art has been the grateful recipient of artworks from a number of generous collectors. Among these is the significant collection of constructivist art donated by George and Edith Rickey.

Many of the works were acquired by George Rickey during his travels and studio visits as he was writing Constructivism: Origins and Evolution (1967). When the Rickeys were living in Berlin, they acquired artwork that was, at the time, mostly unknown to students and museum goers in the U.S. The concept of a museum exhibition of their acquisitions came first from Ulfert Wilke, the late director of the  University of Iowa Museum of Art, and Ala Story, consultant to the Art Gallery, University of California, Santa Barbara. It was from this moment that other academic museums were able to experience these works as a group.

“Constructivism” began with Russian artist Vladimir Tatlin. It refers to any object built rather than cast or carved. It was called “abstract” not in the sense of being abstracted from nature, but rather that constructivism represented “nothing.” The contemporary generation of constructivists continues to show themselves to be anti-aesthetic, anti-mimetic, anti-romantic, anti-symbolic, anti-nostalgic, and sometimes even anti-art. They did not care for taste, harmony, unity, composition, pleasure-giving, technical virtuosity, or competitiveness.

The collection that the Rickeys acquired portrays a cultural history of the modern age. Their collection of constructivist art transcends geographical and political barriers, while denying rigid definitions and concepts of art. George Rickey’s history of constructivist art is divided into the creation of its legacy by the European avant-garde prior to World War II, its impact on the new generation of artists in America, and the later evolution of that legacy both in America and abroad. Rickey’s rejection of art-historical barriers that gatekeep from other art forms allowed him to broaden constructivism to include artists whose work aligned more with optical art, that which considers movement in its creation and effect as a mechanical aspect.

The Rickeys knew of the work of Richard Pettibone, who in the early 1960s in Los Angeles, had documented in miniature various important acquisitions of recent 20th century art by prominent collectors. The Rickeys met Pettibone in Berlin and bought several of his “Minis.”

After returning from Berlin, the Rickeys found their home had been completely filled with 20th century artworks. In 1972, they decided to donate their works to the soon-to-open Neuberger Museum of Art. In 1973, they commissioned Pettibone to reproduce a large section of the collection as a “memento” of their original paintings.

In 1993, an exhibition entitled, The George and Edith Rickey Collection of Constructivist Art and Richard Pettibone Miniatures, opened with thirty-six “miniature” paintings created by Pettibone on view alongside those very same larger works.

Organized by Purchase College associate professor of art history and current director of the Neuberger Museum of Art Dr. Tracy Fitzpatrick and her class of undergraduate and graduate students in the “Introduction to Museum Studies Seminar,” the exhibition was re-thought and reinstalled under the name Miniaturizing Modernism: Richard Pettibone Paints the Rickey Collection in the spring of 2007. The show was on view again under the same name in 2019.

And now, in 2024, a small comparison of the Rickey collection and paired Pettibone paintings is shown as part of the 1974-2024 project of The Making of a Museum: 50 Years commemorative anniversary exhibition  (centered low on the wall in this image).

Text by 
Cameron, Class of 2025
Curatorial Studies Intern
Neuberger Museum of Art
Purchase College, SUNY