News of the College Novemberwinter2006

Ovitz Art Collection Comes to Reed

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In the Movie, Francesca Gabbiani, 2001

Reed’s Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery is hosting back-to-back shows featuring work by leading contemporary artists in Europe and the United States.

The pieces on display are owned by former Hollywood superagent Michael Ovitz and his wife, Judy, who are avid collectors of contemporary art; they also have a formidable collection of Ming Dynasty and African art.

Cooley director Stephanie Snyder ’91, who is curating the exhibition, says the Ovitz Collection, directed by Andrea Feldman Falcione, is not usually loaned in solo exhibitions.

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Caricature of a Confidential Nature, Erik Schmidt, 2005

 

 

  “They collect work that represents some of the most exciting practices happening today,” says Snyder.

The pair of exhibitions are entitled New Trajectories I: Relocations (Jan. 24–March 11) and New Trajectories II: Expansions (April 11– June 11). Relocations highlights painting, drawing, sculpture, and multimedia projects. It includes new work by German artist Stefan Thiel, who creates enormous pastoral scenes using traditional paper-cut techniques, and British artist Graham Little, who reinterprets early twentieth-century portraiture traditions in colored pencil.

Expansions will include recent photographs by Gregory Crewdson, whose work Snyder describes as “fantastical realism,” portraying highly composed scenes such as family gatherings or car accidents in unusual ways.

Snyder says that exhibiting such a diverse collection of contemporary art is a creative coup for Reed. “There’s no other institution in Portland bringing this kind of work here,” she says. “A Reed student would have to travel to L.A., New York, Berlin, or London to see it.”