A Material Legacy brings together many of the most exciting artists of the past decade to illuminate the material impulse found in contemporary art practices. Nearly all made within the last ten years, and many in the last several years, the works in the exhibition provide a fresh view into art making in the twenty-first century and include globe-spanning artists from North America to Chile and India. The daughter and son-in-law of legendary sculpture collectors Ray and Patsy Nasher, Nancy Nasher and her husband David Haemisegger have continued a family tradition by amassing a significant collection of contemporary art that sustains an interest in three-dimensional work while incorporating painting, drawing, and multimedia works, often at enormous scale. A Material Legacy reveals the various ways in which the featured artists manifest a material tendency—as seen in the precise calculations of Sol LeWitt, the surface brilliance and technical bravura of Anish Kapoor, the historically resonant and politically charged work of Kara Walker, and the exuberant confrontation of Kehinde Wiley.
Drawn entirely from the collection of Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger, both members of the Class of 1976, the exhibition continues the Museum’s exploration and celebration in recent years of collections assembled by such distinguished Museum friends as Preston H. Haskell and Lenore and Herb Schorr.