50th Anniversary

Looking back at moments in our galleries

 


2024: Our Golden Anniversary Celebration 

Stories | Programs and Events | Exhibitions

50 Years : 50 Stories

Presented weekly in the Director’s backstory blog, fifty stories will recount the history of the Museum from its founding on the Purchase College, SUNY, campus in 1969 to the present day. Each story plays an important role in honoring our past, celebrating our present, and preparing the NEU to move boldly forward into its next 50 years. 

This week's featured backstory:

  • Fred Wilson '76, Passionate Artist

    backstory50: Full Circle

    As we enter our last month of the 50th anniversary backstories, I find myself shifting from a celebration of the Museum’s rich and robust history to focus on its promising future.

More Stories from the Archives

  • Thank you
  • photo with a collage of book covers

    backstory50: Scholarship

    Over the last 50 years, the Neuberger has produced many, many catalogues featuring groundbreaking scholarship related to our special exhibitions. 

  • Front entrance to the Neuberger Museum of Art

    backstory50: Front of House

    So, you walk into the Neuberger and then what happens? Our Visitor Services and Security team are right there, to welcome you, and to make sure that your visit is safe and comfortable. 

  • Purchase College, SUNY - walkway by the Neuberger Museum of Art

    backstory50: Lessons

    Many, many years ago, I had an intern who was just so smart. She was creative, thoughtful, and had wonderful ideas. But she wasn’t so good at listening. 

  • Word vote in blue with a red box and a blue checkmark
  • Collection of backpacks filled with art supplies ready for distribution

    backstory50: Our work with kids

    Nearby the Neuberger is the Purchase College Children’s Center, which both of my kids attended. Periodically, teachers will bring the children by to explore our exhibitions.

    Our connection to kids is core to our mission as an academic museum. 

  • Yellow square with the NEU circle logo and the words 2024 Yaseen Lecture on Fine Arts and a graphic with the lecture title

    backstory50: Save the date for our next Yaseen Lecture

    I wrote to you in April about Helen and Leonard Yaseen, former residents of Larchmont who were among the inaugural members of the Board of the Friends of the Neuberger Museum of Art. 

  •    Brochure cover for the 1993 exhibition entitled, The George and Edith Rickey Collection of Constructivist Art and Richard Pettibone Mi...

    backstory50: Richard Pettibone Paints the Rickey Collection

    Today, I reached into the archives to find one of my first backstory blog posts written in January 2019 when we were installing Miniaturizing Modernism: Richard Pettibone Paints the Rickey Collection.

  •    The archivist photographing scrapbooks from the Roy R. Neuberger Papers.

    backstory50: Activating Our Cultural Legacies

    One of the transformational relationships we have built over the last several years has been with The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which saw the need for the Neuberger to be able to document and preserve its own history. 

  • Exhibition photograph on the Museum's second floor gallery with various paintings, photographs, and sculptures on view

    backstory50: Transformative Giving

    Endowments both enrich and transform the trajectory of a museum, providing financial support for things such as new acquisitions, updated technology, and even the hiring and longevity of staff positions.

  • Orange poster with the title of the Fluxus etc exhibition and details about the FluxFest in 1983

    backstory50: Fluxus

    Following last week’s backstory50 about Yoko Ono’s Mend Piece iterations and her role in Fluxus, performance, and instruction art, this week’s backstory50 highlights the Neuberger’s 1983 exhibition Fluxus, etc.: The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection and the FLUXFEST that was held in tandem with it. Read more here. 

  • More than 500 people beaded, sorted, stacked, and arranged - under artist Liza Lou's watchful eyes and brilliant plan - a 1,400-square fo...

    backstory50: Participatory Art

    At the Neuberger we like to produce exhibition projects where everyone can participate in the art making.

  • From Welded! on view at the Neuberger Museum of Art May 14, 2000 - August 27, 2000. Photographed by Jose Smith.

    backstory50: Welded!

    The beautiful thing about art is that it communicates, in one way or another, with its setting–whether it be inside the white-cube gallery of a museum, or within a grassy patch of a bustling park. 

  • photo of an artwork comprised of white painted nails on a white canvas

    backstory50: Constructivist Art at the NEU

    When The Making of a Museum exhibition opened in 1974, Roy R. Neuberger’s modern art collection was the largest of five groups of art represented in the show. Hans Richters’ collection of Dada art, which we wrote about a few weeks ago was a second. Today, Curatorial Assistant Rem Ribeiro is helping me introduce a third: the George and Edith Rickey Collection of Constructivist Art.

  • Archival color photograph of an office with gentlemen working at rows of desks facing a Wall Street-style trading board flanked by artworks.

    backstory50: Featured Partnership: Neuberger Berman

    In the 1950s, few outside the museum world could imagine going to the office every day and being surrounded by the work of some of the world’s most well-known—and emerging—contemporary artists. Unless, of course, you happened to have worked at Neuberger Berman. 

  • A collection of paintings on a gallery wall in the Neuberger Museum of Art

    backstory50: Firsts

    In January of 2022 I wrote to you about Faith Ringgold’s mural-size painting entitled For the Women’s House (1971), painted for the women then incarcerated on Rikers Island. The work was the final piece created for American People, a series of paintings—her first, actually—created between 1963 and 1971.

  • Edward Hopper, Barber Shop, 1931 Oil on canvas, 60 x 78 inches Collection Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of ...

    backstory50: The largest Edward Hopper

    It’s true. Barber Shop (1931) is the largest work Edward Hopper ever painted. 

  • Roy R. Neuberger, founding patron, Neuberger Museum of Art

    backstory50: Happy Birthday, Roy!

    This past Sunday, July 21, was the 121st anniversary of Roy R. Neuberger’s birthday. This week it seems fitting to focus on one of the most wonderful sets of objects in the Neuberger’s collection, what we lovingly call the “Birthday Books.”

  • Elizabeth Catlett, Homage to Black Women Poets - Study (1984), Cast Bronze

    backstory50: Catlett x 2

    So, right now we have a work on view that is in two places at one time—Elizabeth Catlett’s study Homage to Black Women Poets (1984). OK, it’s not really visible in two places, but the object is a part of both The Making of a Museum: 50 Years and Reflection / Refraction … although it’s only physically on view in the latter.

  • Installation image of Laura Anderson Barbata's Nuestra historia no se encuentra en un libro [Our history Is Not Found in a Book], 2021

    backstory50: In the public eye

    Do you remember these hammocks? I do. Laura Anderson Barbata’s Nuestra historia no se encuentra en un libro [Our history Is Not Found in a Book] was one of the first outdoor sculpture projects I saw when I arrived on the Purchase College campus many years ago. I didn’t realize immediately that it was a sculpture project... which is one of the most interesting things to me about public art in general.

  • An abstract painting using light and dark. Background is white on top, black on bottom with 4 peaks. There are 8 totem-style motifs split in

    backstory50: Artist as Curator

    Many years ago, when I was Chief Curator at the Neuberger, I was thinking about putting together an exhibition of the work of Forrest Bess. We have a wonderful painting of his work in our collection entitled Before Man, which was purchased by Roy R. Neuberger from the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1978 and donated to the Neuberger in 1986.

  • A collage of older adults working on art (drawing and painting) projects

    backstory50: Creative aging

    Last year the Neuberger Museum of Art initiated the NEU Vitality Art Workshops, a series of programs for members of our community who are over the age of 55.

  • Text Celebrating Juneteenth Freedom Day on a black background with color bars of gold, red, and green at the top and bottom of the graphic

    backstory50: Juneteenth

    All this year these backstory messages have focused on the celebration of the Museum’s 50th anniversary, focusing on today through the lens of the past. 

  • This installation shot shows the artist's 1976 black painted cor-ten steel sculpture Celebration II being craned into place for the exhibiti

    backstory50: Nevelson at Purchase, 1977

    Do you recognize this sculpture, being craned into place for the Neuberger’s 1977 Louise Nevelson exhibition? You may if you’ve spent time across the street from Purchase College at the Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Gardens at PepsiCo.

  • Image: This untitled work by Max Ernst is part of the Hans Richter Collection of Dada Art, which was bequeathed by the artist to the Neub...

    backstory50: Dada Art at the NEU

    The extraordinary depth and quality of the objects that Roy R. Neuberger donated to the Museum over the course of his lifetime can overshadow some of the other extraordinary areas of the Museum’s collection. One of those areas is the Hans Richter Collection of Dada Art.

  • Archival images of student exhibition covers from the 1970s to the present day

    backstory50: Training the next generation

    The Neuberger Museum of Art has always trained students in curatorial practice and the student-curated exhibition has long been a hallmark of that training.

  • A group of students seated on the sidewalk outside the Neuberger Museum of Art

    backstory50: The Museum as Classroom

    In my Ph.D. program in art history at Rutgers I had an unexpected experience. Part of my funding required that I serve as a teaching assistant and, to my great surprise, I found that I loved being in the classroom. Eventually, teaching my own classes but still intent on continuing my museum career that was already a decade-long prior to grad school, I came to understand the ways in which museums could function as classrooms.

  • Isamu Noguchi's The Bow during the Museum's first exhibition in 1974, The Making of a Museum

    backstory50: 1974 Inaugural Exhibition

    Fifty years ago this week, the Neuberger Museum of Art opened its doors to the public with its very first exhibition, The Making of a Museum

  • Archival image of the ART sculpture outside the front door of the Neuberger Museum of Art

    backstory50: Robert Indiana’s “Art” (fronted by a follow-up about uric acid)

    So, last week’s backstory50 got a LOT of raised eyebrows.

    I kind of thought it might. 

  • Henry Moore's 1966-69 bronze entitled Large Two Forms has been a beloved part of the collection of the Neuberger Museum of Art since the ...
  • Installation image: The Making of a Museum: 50 Years exhibition with a view of Peter Hurd, Boy from the Plains, 1938, Tempera on wood, Co...

    backstory50: A collection in service to others

    On June 19, 1960, a critic for The New York Times wrote, “No private collection in this country, or for that matter anywhere, has been more generously put into service of the public than that of Mr. and Mrs. Roy R. Neuberger.”

  • A group of students seated on the floor listing to a Volunteer Museum Educator describe one of Jackson Pollock's paintings

    backstory50: Dismantling the “Van Gogh Effect”

    This is a story best told by Roy R. Neuberger in his own words (excerpted from The Passionate Collector):

  • Gordon Parks at a podium with the words Neuberger Museum of Art

    backstory50: The Yaseen Lectures

    As we prepare to host the first of the Museum’s 50th anniversary celebratory social events this weekend, I’ve been reflecting about the incredible legacies that were established by some of our founding members.
  • Close up of the hands of three young students creating art projects

    backstory50: Transformational Giving

    Today, I want to tell you about one of the Neuberger Museum of Art’s greatest supporters, the Straus family.

  •    Cleve Gray, Threnody, 1972-73. polymer acrylic, Duco enamel and oil on canvas. 28 panels, 20 feet x 250 feet. Collection Friends of th...

    backstory50: The biggest gallery around

    I hope you will all be joining us next month for our 50th anniversary celebration events.  When we gather in the Theater Gallery on Saturday evening, April 13, to honor Janet Langsam, Fred Wilson, and Lois Bregstein, surrounded by the site-specific painting, Threnody, we will be in one of the largest exhibitions spaces in the region. 

  • Pair of earplugs

    backstory50: Rethinking our objects from Africa

    Objects from Africa have been on view at the Neuberger Museum of Art since it opened to the public in 1974. 

  •    Image:  Unidentified visitors at the exhibition, Architecture for the Arts: The State of New York College at Purchase. May 13, 1971 th...

    backstory50: On display at the Museum of Modern Art

    This is one of my favorite stories because it connects our campus to another great institution, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

  • Volunteer Museum Educators at the Neuberger Museum of Art (Summer Luncheon - June 2019)

    backstory50: The Museum Service Council

    Another of the Neuberger’s great support organizations is the Museum Service Council. The MSC is comprised of devoted art lovers who have volunteered hours and hours of their time to the education of generations of students—from the College and from the community—who have walked through the doors of the Museum.

  • Klein Gallery view, The Friends at 50: Selections from the Collection exhibition

    backstory50: The Friends of the Neuberger Museum of Art

    One the best things about the Neuberger Museum of Art are the people who make up our community. And among the ‘best of the best’ are the leaders who have, for so long now, been a part of our amazing support and advisory group, the Friends of the Neuberger Museum of Art.

  •    Cleve Gray, Threnody, 1972-73. polymer acrylic, Duco enamel and oil on canvas. 28 panels, 20 feet x 250 feet. Collection Friends of th...

    backstory50: Threnody

    Opening today, Cleve Gray’s Threnody is on view again as part of the Museum’s 50th anniversary celebration.  

  • NEU 50 Years Logo in a red heart

    backstory50: Happy Valentine’s Day!

    Today’s story is your story to tell.

  •    Dulce Pinzón, Superman. Noé Reyes from the State of Puebla, Mexico works as a delivery boy in Brooklyn, New York. He sends 500 dolla...

    backstory50: Building a Museum collection

    A few weeks ago, I wrote about Roy R. Neuberger’s 1969 founding promised gift. Twenty-nine objects were accessioned by the Neuberger Museum of Art in that year. Since then, the Museum’s collection has grown to comprise nearly 7,000 objects, which have been donated, promised, bequeathed, and purchased.

  • Neuberger Museum of Art under construction, 1972. Photo H. Bernstein. Courtesy Purchase College Archives and Special Collections.

    backstory50: Building a Museum

    No, it’s not shiny, or fancy, or visible from the road. But that’s not what it was supposed to be. 

  •    Aerial photograph of the Purchase College Campus, Purchase, New York. n.d. Neuberger Museum of Art Archives, Purchase College, State U...

    backstory50: The Academical Village

    The master plan for Purchase College was inspired by Thomas Jefferson’s master plan for the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

  •    William Gropper (1897-1977), Untitled (Study for The Wine Festival), ca. 1934. Ink on paper, 10 5/8 x 12 3/8 in. Collection Neuberger ...

    backstory50: The Passionate Collector

    In 2002, as Roy R. Neuberger turned 100, he published his second memoir, The Passionate Collector: Eighty Years in the World of Art. He dedicated the book “with great affection and respect to the extraordinary, original, passionate artists who have enriched my life beyond measure.” 

  •    Milton Avery (1885 –1965). Sunday Riders, 1929. Oil on canvas, 30 x 25 in. Collection Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, SUN...

    backstory50: The Promised Gift

    Do you know which work of art was the very first to enter the Museum’s collection? 

  • A photo of Robert Indiana's Art sculpture in a snow-covered courtyard with the numbers 2024 and Happy New Year and Happy Anniversary

    backstory50: Happy and Happy

    2024. A great year. Why? Because the Neuberger Museum of Art is celebrating its 50th anniversary! 

  • backstory: Celebrate with us!

    Between your other festive holiday happenings, take a minute to mark your calendars for some of the special events that we’ll be hosting at the Museum during our Year of Celebration! 

  • Orange square with a white border and large numbers 50 with small letters neu overlapping the top of the 5 and the word Years beneath

    backstory: Our 50th Anniversary

    You’ve heard me mention that all year next year the Neuberger will be celebrating our 50th anniversary. 

  • Archival black and white image of three women in seated positions facing the camera and smiling

    backstory: November 19 and the Friends

    You’ve heard me mention that next year we’ll be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Museum. This milestone wouldn’t be possible without the support of the Friends of the Neuberger Museum of Art. It’s true. We wouldn’t be one of the top academic art museums in the country without the Friends organization. 

  • black and white archival image of the construction of the Neuberger Museum

    backstory: Groundbreaking

    This Friday, October 6, marks the 54th anniversary of the groundbreaking for the museum. 

Programs and Events

Friends, neighbors, and guests from around the globe are invited to celebrate with us during a year-long schedule of artist talks, lectures, and other programming.


Exhibitions

Inspired by our first exhibition in 1974, the Museum’s galleries will be filled with commemorative, multimedia experiences illustrating important moments from our history, highlighting objects from our collection, and showcasing materials from our vast archives.

The Making of a Museum Exhibitions

  • Orange square with a white border and large numbers 50 with small letters neu overlapping the top of the 5 and the word Years beneath

    The Making of a Museum: 50 Years

    On View
    January 24 - December 22, 2024

    For fifty years, the Neuberger Museum of Art has fostered learning, sparked the creative process, and investigated understandings of the world in which we live through its collections, exhibitions, and education programs. 

  •    Milton Avery (1885 –1965). Sunday Riders, 1929. Oil on canvas, 30 x 25 in. Collection Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, SUN...

    The Promised Gift

    On View
    January 24, 2024

    West Gallery
    A project in The Making of a Museum: 50 Years exhibition

    The Promised Gift tells the story of Roy R. Neuberger’s 1969 grand and optimistic philanthropic contribution, a gift of 300 works of art to the State University of New York. 

  • black and white archival image of the construction of the Neuberger Museum

    1969—1974

    On View
    January 24, 2024
    Klein Gallery
    A project in The Making of a Museum: 50 Years exhibition

    1969—1974 explores the role of Roy R. Neuberger as one of the most important collectors of his day, the conceptualization, design, and construction of the Museum, and its use in the early 1970s by the students and faculty of Purchase College prior to the formal opening of the Neuberger Museum of Art in 1974.

  • Robert Indiana, ART, 1972, polychrome aluminum, 84 x 86 x 42 inches. Collection Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, SUNY. Museum p...

    1974—2024

    On View
    April 13, 2024

    South Gallery
    A project in The Making of a Museum: 50 Years exhibition

    1974—2024 tells the story of the years from the time of the formal opening of the Museum to the present. 

  •    Cleve Gray, Threnody, 1972-73. polymer acrylic, Duco enamel and oil on canvas. 28 panels, 20 feet x 250 feet. Collection Friends of th...

    Threnody

    ON VIEW: February 21 - August 4, 2024
    Theater Gallery
    A project in The Making of a Museum: 50 Years exhibition

    Threnody is a 250-foot-wide site-specific painting created by American artist Cleve Gray for the opening of the Neuberger Museum of Art.  

Generous financial support for The Making of a Museum: 50 Years exhibition has been provided by ArtsWestchester, with funding made possible by Westchester County government with the support of County Executive George Latimer; the Purchase College Foundation; and the Friends of the Neuberger Museum of Art.

Additional support for Neuberger Museum of Art exhibitions and programs has been provided by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.