Twelve Museums Acquire Works by Gallery Wendi Norris Artists

June 9, 2024

Please join Gallery Wendi Norris in congratulating the Art Institute of Chicago, the Asian Art Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Female Artists of Mougins Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., the National Galleries of Scotland, the Nevada Museum of Art, the Newark Art Museum, the Office of Art in Embassies, and the Tate Modern on their recent acquisitions of our artists’ work.

The Art Institute of Chicago acquired Naturaleza muerta resucitando (1963) by Remedios Varo to join the museum’s esteemed Joseph Winterbotham Collection. Naturaleza muerta resucitando stands out among the artist’s oeuvre as the largest work on canvas and last painting completed by the artist before her untimely death in 1963. A meditation on the cosmic balance between life and death and a prophetic final work, Naturaleza muerta resucitando is one of Varo’s finest and most singular works.

The Asian Art Museum added Arsenal of Ambiguity (2023) by Ambreen Butt to its collection, an acquisition made possible by the George Hopper Fitch Bequest. The artwork is a response to the pervasive gun violence in the United States and her coming to terms with it as a mother. The central demon figure holds a gun in one hand and irises, representing both fragility and protection, in the other - a balancing act between aggression and vulnerability.

The Brooklyn Museum acquired Voyeurs and Beholders of… (2008) by María Magdalena Campos-Pons, a large-scale Polaroid work which thematizes the act of looking and being looked at. Eyes have been a central motif for Campos-Pons throughout her career, and this work encapsulates her fascination with different forms of sight, from the voyeuristic gaze to necessary forms of witnessing. The work is now on view in the artist's major traveling survey exhibition Behold.

The Cincinnati Art Museum acquired Sultana’s Dream (2018) by Chitra Ganesh with the support of the Alice Bimel Endowment for Asian Art. A large-scale narrative suite of twenty-seven handcut relief prints, Sultana’s Dream is inspired by the feminist utopian text of the same name, written in 1905 by Rokeya Sakhhawat Hussain, an early Bengali feminist writer and social reformer. 

The Female Artists of the Mougins Museum, with the Christian Levett Collection, added Mid-Day of the Canary (1967) by Leonora Carrington to its collection of over 500 women artists, recently unveiled to the public at the museum’s opening in June 2024. According to the artist, the figures in Mid-Day of the Canary came to her in a dream. The hypnagogic apparitions take the form of a trio of towering spectral forms and imbue the painting with Carrington’s signature enigmatic iconography and ethereal style. 

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston acquired two iconic works by María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Finding Balance (2015) and Testigo (2023). The 28-panel Polaroid work, Finding Balance, is part of a series entitled FeFa that examines the intersection of Campos-Pons’s African, Caribbean, and Chinese heritage within the context of slavery and the sugar trade. Finding Balance is part performance and part photography, the two mediums combined to create a towering masterwork that is greater than the sum of its parts. The watercolor, Testigo, features a bare body seen from behind whose flesh is covered in wide-open eyes, some staring, some shedding a tear. “Testigo,” meaning “witness” in Spanish, thematizes the idea of the body as a witness to the collective pain and pleasure that life can hold.

The National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. acquired Remedios Varo's Banqueros en acción (1962), the painting and a preparatory study. The painting was acquired as a Gift of Funds of Margot Kelly and the preparatory drawing with the support of the Patrons’ Permanent Fund. This paired acquisition is a rare opportunity for a museum to add both an exquisite artwork and its study to its collection, gaining insight into Varo’s painstaking preparatory process and meticulous draftsmanship. 

The National Galleries of Scotland also acquired an artwork by Remedios Varo, Encuentro (1959). The painting was purchased with support from the Henry and Sula Walton Fund and Art Fund, with a contribution from the Wolfson Foundation. The painting was featured in the solo exhibition Remedios Varo: Encuentros (2023) at Gallery Wendi Norris, which took its name from the artwork and explored the motif of the encounter throughout Varo’s oeuvre. 

The Nevada Museum of Art added Chimera II (2007) by Rohini Devasher to its collection, purchased with funds from the Hoppe/Deming Art Acquisition Endowment. Chimera II is a digital image by the artist with hand-drawn elements, which explores the idea of the “archetypal plant.” Using this abstract concept as a springboard, Devasher’s image hovers between plant and animal, between machine-made and organic form, a hybrid science-fictional botanical morphology that is simultaneously familiar and entirely unclassifiable.

The Newark Museum of Art acquired Daughters of the East (2008) by Ambreen Butt, a suite of five prints created in response to the tumultuous events surrounding the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) clash in Islamabad in 2007. In this signature work of her oeuvre, Butt brings attention to the complexity of narratives surrounding the incident, particularly focusing on the involvement of young women protestors and the intersection of beauty, violence, and empowerment.

The Neward Museum of Art also added Chitra Ganesh’s The Scorpion Gesture: Adventures of the White Beryl (2018) to its collection. Adventures of the White Beryl is one of a series of five animations by Ganesh created in response to the Padmasambhava (referred to as “the Second Buddha'' in Tibet) and the Maitreya (Future) Buddha. Ganesh’s animations depart from traditional iconography associated with these figures and challenge the boundaries between mediums.

The Office of Art in Embassies acquired Cuatro Caminos (2017) by Julio César Morales to join the collection of Art in Embassies, U.S. Department of State, Permanent Collection U.S. Consulate Guadalajara, Mexico. The title of this large-scale, four-panel piece references “The Devil’s Highway/Camino del Diablo,” a historical trail that runs through the Sonoran Desert, crossing the US/Mexico border. Utilizing photographs and images from Morales’ extensive border archive, the images in Cuatro Caminos are manipulated to remove the color and create a chromatic collage with the debris left behind from immigrant crossings in this treacherous and desolate landscape. 

The Tate Modern acquired María Magdalena Campos-Pons’ major installation Matanzas Sound Map (2017). The work is lent by the Tate Americas Foundation, courtesy of the Endowment Fund and the Latin American Acquisitions Committee 2024. This sound and glass sculptural installation, which originally debuted at Documenta 14 in Athens, Greece, explores the sonic landscape of Campos-Pons’ birthplace in the region Matanzas, Cuba, and creates a cartography of sound that is evocative and haunting.