The Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia will show the work of artists active in New York City in the 1950s and 1960s in the exhibition “Artists of the New York School” from January 14 to March 19, 2017.

Organized by Sarah Kate Gillespie, the museum’s curator of American art, this exhibition features works from the museum’s collection and on loan from several private collections. It includes paintings, sculptures and works on paper and highlights what was known as the “New York School,” a group of artists working in the city who focused on making abstract work. Along with well-known male artists such as James Brooks, Frank Stella and Philip Guston, the exhibit will feature work by female artists Louise Nevelson, Michael (Corrine) West, Helen Frankenthaler and Anne Ryan.

“Artists of the New York School” functions as a companion exhibition to “Advanced and Irascible: Abstract Expressionism from the Collection of Jeanne and Carroll Berry,” also on view at the museum beginning January 14. It includes about 30 works, several of which are also on loan from the Berrys’ collection. An untitled metal sculpture by Robert Goodnough was a gift to the museum in 2016 and will be on view for the first time in the exhibition. An eight-foot-high mixed-media work by Fritz Bultman that uses gouache and collage is a highlight, as is Nevelson’s untitled tall wood sculpture.

Although diverse in medium and technique, the artists of the New York School were key in establishing the United States as a place that welcomed avant-garde art. While visibly influenced by art movements that originated in Europe, such as surrealism and abstraction, the New York School artists innovated in terms of content and material.

Gillespie will also teach a split-level undergraduate and graduate art history course on abstract expressionism at the Lamar Dodd School of Art this spring semester. The class will make heavy use of both “Advanced and Irascible” and “Artists of the New York School,” allowing students to study original works of art in person, rather than reproduced in a textbook.

Related events include a film series beginning January 26; 90 Carlton: Winter, the museum’s quarterly reception (free for members of the Friends of the Georgia Museum of Art, $5 non-members) on February 10 at 5:30 p.m.; and a Family Day focused on abstract valentines on February 11 at 10 a.m. All events are free and open to the public unless otherwise indicated. 

“Artists of the New York School” is sponsored by the W. Newton Morris Charitable Foundation and the Friends of the Georgia Museum of Art.