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Museum of Modern Art announces Claes Oldenburg. The Street and The Store

Museum of Modern Art presents Claes Oldenburg. The Street and The Store, an exhibition on view from April 14 to August 5, 2013.


Claes Oldenburg (American, born Sweden 1929). Floor Burger.. 1962. Canvas filled with foam rubber and cardboard boxes, painted with acrylic paint. 52 x 84 x 84” (132.1 x 213.4 x 213.4 cm). Collection Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Purchase, 1967. © 1962 Claes Oldenburg. Photo: Sean Weaver.

Claes Oldenburg’s humorous and profound depictions of everyday objects have earned him a reputation as one of the most important artists of his generation. Claes Oldenburg: The Street and The Store explores the beginnings of Oldenburg’s extraordinary career with an extensive and in-depth look at his artistic production from the first half of the 1960s. The exhibition focuses on two major bodies of work that redefined the concept of sculpture: The Street, an installation that conjures the gritty and chaotic atmosphere of downtown New York City, originally shown at the Judson Gallery of the Judson Memorial Church in 1960, and The Store, a large group of handmade, brightly painted sculptures depicting a cornucopia of commercial commodities and comestibles, presented in various iterations between 1961 and 1964. In addition to The Street and The Store, Oldenburg’s Mouse Museum and Ray Gun Wing, self-contained “museums” created in the 1970s that house careful arrangements of the artists’ personal archives of American popular cultural and various tests and experiments from this studio, will be installed in MoMA’s Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium. Claes Oldenburg: The Street and The Store is organized by Achim Hochdörfer, Curator, the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien; and The Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition at MoMA is organized by Ann Temkin, The Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator, and Paulina Pobocha, Assistant Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture.

The MoMA presentation is supported in part by The Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art and by The Junior Associates of The Museum of Modern Art. – www.moma.org