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Gift from Blake Byrne Doubles Nasher Museum's Contemporary Art Holdings

Duke alumnus makes the gift on the occasion of his 50th reunion at Duke in honor of Raymond D. Nasher, the late founder and namesake of the Nasher Museum.

Duke University alumnus E. Blake Byrne has promised a gift of 37 works of art to the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke, a portion of which will be exhibited through Sept. 30.

 

 

The gift doubles the Nasher Museum's collection of contemporary art and features 37 works by 26 artists, including Anthony Caro, David Hammons, Jasper Johns, Sol Lewitt, Glenn Ligon, Paul Pfeiffer, Thomas Scheibitz, Rudolf Schwartzkogler and Kehinde Wiley. The gift includes a rare chair made of erasers by Gary Simmons, known for his chalkboard drawings, and portfolios of serial prints and photographs by Paul McCarthy, Raymond Pettibon, Ed Ruscha and Hiroshi Sugimoto. The exhibition, "Collected Identities: Gifts from the Blake Byrne Collection," features selections from the gift and also works on loan from Byrne, including those by Fred Wilson and John Baldessari.

 

Byrne is making the gift on the occasion of his 50th reunion at Duke in honor of Raymond D. Nasher, the late founder and namesake of the Nasher Museum. "Blake Byrne's generous and very significant gift gives an incredible boost to our growing contemporary art collection," said Kimerly Rorschach, the Mary D. B.T. and James H. Semans Director of the museum. "Contemporary art is one of our strongest collecting priorities. We are delighted to share art of this caliber with audiences in Durham and the surrounding region." The gift draws from the collection that Byrne has built over the past 20 years. His collection represents important artists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Byrne is listed as one of ARTnews magazine's top 200 collectors in the world and as one of Art & Antiques magazine's "100 Top Collectors Who Are Making a Difference." He is chairman of the Nasher Museum's board of advisors. "This gift will be instrumental for teaching contemporary art, with a strong focus on African-American artists," said Trevor Schoonmaker, the museum's curator of contemporary art. "The work is very diverse and engages issues of gender relations, sexual identity, and racial and cultural identity." Byrne earned a bachelor of arts degree from Duke in 1957 and an MBA from Columbia University. He led a distinguished broadcasting career, most recently as president of Argyle Television in Los Angeles. He moved to Los Angeles in 1989 to become president and general manager of KCAL-9. Before that, he managed various network affiliates and was the vice president of television for LIN Broadcasting. Art has become his primary focus.

 

 

Byrne is a longtime supporter of Duke, and two of the gallery spaces in the Nasher Museum's Biddle Pavilion are named for the Byrne family. He also recently gave a seminal painting by South African artist Marlene Dumas, "The Woman of Algiers," to the Nasher Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, a gift shared by the two museums. Byrne was also instrumental in helping the museum purchase "The uncertain museum," a 2004 installation by Danish artist Olafur Elíasson.