The Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University in New Jersey has received a gift of more than 70 modern and contemporary works the collection of the philanthropists and long-time museum patrons Anne and Arthur Goldstein. The Goldsteins’ relationship with the Zimmerli goes back decades, beginning with Arthur’s first visit to the museum in the late 1990s.
“Like many collectors, Anne and I have reached a point where we’re thinking about the future of the collection and where these works can have the greatest impact,” Arthur Goldstein tells The Art Newspaper. “We knew our collection would become part of the life of the museum and continue to be seen and appreciated by future generations. After so many years of sustained support, making our largest gift of art felt like the natural next step in our relationship with the Zimmerli.”
Over the years, the Goldsteins have made significant contributions to the museum, including donating what now amount to more than 160 works by artists like Cindy Sherman, Hannah Wilke, Robert Rauschenberg, Annie Leibovitz, Nicole Eisenman and Vito Acconci—many of whom were not previously represented in its collection.
Arthur Goldstein notes that the Zimmerli has a strong collection of Japanese art and work by Japanese American artists, which inspired him to include one of his favourite paintings in the donation: New York M-33 (1966) by Takeshi Kawashima, a monumental painting from the artist’s New York Series that blends traditional Japanese iconography with American Pop and Minimalism. In the year it was painted, Kawashima was included in the landmark show The New Japanese Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.
Takeshi Kawashima’s New York M-33 (1966) Photo: Bruce M White, © Takeshi Kawashima
“The Zimmerli had work by other artists in the show, like Minoru Niizuma and Kumi Sugai, but they were missing a Kawashima,” Arthur Goldstein says. “Now they have a very strong one.”
Some other highlights of the gift include Mark Bradford’s acclaimed photographic series Miss China Silk (2005), which features Asian models with African-inspired hairstyles; a double-sided trace monotype by Hedda Sterne, Untitled (1949), to which the artist added a pencil drawing; and works by Polly Apfelbaum, Katherine Bradford, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Tauba Auerbach, Juliana Huxtable, Troy Lamarr Chew II, Elizabeth Murray and others.
The Goldsteins, whose background is in law, began collecting in the early 1990s and have donated works to institutions like MoMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Art Institute of Chicago and others.
“What makes Anne and Arthur such extraordinary partners is the trust they have placed in the museum,” says the museum’s director, Maura Reilly. “Every gift has reflected their confidence in our ability to care for these works, share them with the public, and use them to inspire teaching and scholarship.”
Troy Lamarr Chew II’s Corrlinks and Jaypay/Free My Dawgs (2021) Photo: Bruce M White, © Troy Chew
Works from the donation will be featured in the forthcoming exhibition Mashup: New Acquisitions from the Zimmerli, which opens in February 2027.
“One of the most exciting aspects of this gift is the new questions it allows us to ask,” says Jeremiah William McCarthy, the museum’s chief curator. “For example, what does postwar abstraction look like if a polymath like Hedda Sterne is central rather than peripheral? Or how does Andy Warhol’s legacy shift when viewed through Troy Lamarr Chew II’s soup cans? What new conversations emerge between the self-portraits of Juliana Huxtable and Cindy Sherman?”
The exhibition will pair works from the Goldstein collection with those donated by the Alex Katz Foundation in 2024, featuring artists like Sally Gabori, Aaron Gilbert, Nicola Tyson, John Moore and Jim Ebersole.
“One of the things I love about these two gifts is that they approach contemporary art from very different directions, yet they complement one another beautifully,” McCarthy says. “The Goldsteins in particular collected across media, bringing together artists whose practices challenge established histories of American art.”
