By Yunkyo Kim In the 1960s and 70s, Abby Weed Grey traveled through Asia and the Middle East collecting works of modernism, a movement that, even now, is widely perceived as a Western phenomenon. The collection is a permanent installation at New York University’s Grey Art Gallery, which Grey established in 1974. At Northwestern, the […]

The distinctly rich artistic heritages of Iran, Turkey and India are celebrated at this thought-provoking exhibition featuring some 114 modernist works, all exploring local traditions, cultural exchanges and the sights and sounds of modern life. Organised by New York University’s Grey Art Gallery and now on display at Chicago’s Block Museum of Art, the exhibition’s […]

Drawing from the esteemed holdings of Modern Asian and Middle Eastern art from the Abby Weed Grey collection, this show will include between 30 and 40 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints from multiple countries, exploring nuances of heritage and identity. Among the artists included are Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu and Nevzat Akoral.

By Matt Cassidy In what is NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery’s first physical exhibition since the onset of the pandemic, you can explore the works of Abby Weed Grey from her journeys around Iran, Turkey and Iran in the exhibit Modernisms. For more information, visit NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery. Read more

By Kerry Cardoza Modernisms: Iranian, Turkish and Indian Highlights from NYU’s Abby Grey Collection (Block Museum) This wide-ranging survey helps correct West-centric art historical records by focusing on the exciting innovations coming out of three nations in the 1960s and 1970s. Read more

By Chadd Scott What is Modern art? Monet, Renoir and Degas? Yes. Van Gogh, Gauguin and Cezanne? Yes. Matisse, Picasso, Kandinsky. Of course. Pollock, de Kooning and Rothko. Naturally. Modern art–the period between the rise of Impressionism in the 1860s through Pop art in the 1960s–has been defined by its titans, their work, their legacies. Read […]

By Stephanie Kulke CHICAGO: A major exhibition at the Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University in Evanston, a suburb of Chicago, next year will be the first of its type attempt to bring together modern art from India and other countries like Iran and Turkey seeking to expand the Western perspectives of modern art. […]

"Modernisms" is included in The New York Times' list of must-see art shows this fall.

Michael FitzGerald reviews Modernisms for the Wall Street Journal, September 17, 2019.

This bustling exhibition showcases works from the nineteen-sixties and early seventies, which she acquired on her travels to India, Iran, and Turkey. Grey was drawn to artists who, as she put it, “were breaking with the past to cope with the present” while maintaining their ties to tradition, whether this meant bridging local and global aesthetics or resisting Western influences.

ArtDaily announces the opening of Modernisms

By Alexandra Chaves At NYUAD Art Gallery, the three art histories of Iran, India and Turkey are drawn together by a rather unlikely character: an American woman named Abby Weed Grey. In the 1960s and 1970s, Grey travelled around the Middle East and Asia, and consequently built an art collection of more than 700 works […]

The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University is the first to bring together modern art from India, Iran, Turkey. The goal is to expand Western perspectives of modern art. “Modernisms: Iranian, Turkish and Indian Highlights from NYU’s Abby Grey Collection” surveys art from three nations where unique and vibrant forms of modernism sprang forth in […]

By G.K. Sharman Say “modernism” and many people think of Picasso, Pollock or Dali. But the artistic movement, which celebrated freedom of expression, abstraction, experimentation and occasional social and political messaging, was global in nature and influence. An upcoming exhibition at the Rollins Museum of Art, which runs between September 17 and December 31, brings […]

Roberta Smith reviews Modernisms for The New York Times, September 9, 2019.

Although the Grey Art Gallery’s exhibition Modernisms: Iranian, Turkish, and Indian Highlights from NYU’s Abby Grey Collection, is certainly not the first time its rare collection of postwar art has been on view in recent years, the modern art of these three countries is shown together for the first time to acknowledge the foresight of its major benefactor, as well as founder of the museum, Abby Weed Grey (1902-1983).

Grey Art Gallery’s “Modernisms: Iranian, Turkish, and Indian Highlights from NYU’s Abby Weed Grey Collection” offered as much a sampling of global art practices during the 1960s and ’70s as it did a glimpse into the collector’s eye. Grey, the museum’s founder, notably sought out contemporary artists in those regions at a time when art discourse remained largely Eurocentric, with cross-cultural exchange as the primary tenet of her collecting efforts during the Cold War.

GothamToGo announces Modernisms.

I almost missed seeing the Grey Art Gallery’s (NYU) powerful exhibit of contemporary Iranian, Indian, and Turkish art, from the 1960s and 1970s. With only two days to go (it closes on December 7th), I popped into the gallery, gravitating almost immediately to three etchings by Krishna Reddy, an artist and SoHo neighbor who lived in 80 Wooster Street.

The gallery has exhibited works from the Grey collection before. Previous shows have largely stayed within the boundaries of national identity, particularly Iranian. With “Modernisms,” however, the gallery is creating a more expressly cross-cultural dialogue within its walls. Modern works from Iran, Turkey, and India will hang side by side, evoking in real space Grey’s original mission. Along with facilitating this dialogic end, the show also hopes to serve as a corrective to long-held Eurocentric views on modernism.

By Sarah Ogden The Rollins Museum of Art recently acquired a new fall collection, which includes multiple exhibitions that touch on various themes. One exhibition, located at the front of the museum, follows the school’s Common Read theme, which this year is empathy and compassion. This exhibition is titled “Art Encounters.” Another exhibition called “Modernisms” is from […]

By Matt Cassidy Calling all aesthetes and art lovers in Abu Dhabi, we have some wonderful news to report to you. One the capital’s favourite art areans, NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) art galleries is unlocking its doors once again to welcome visitors to explore its halls and walls on Monday 15 November. Launching on 15 […]

By Alexandra Chaves For the first time since the start of the pandemic, the NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery will reopen with a physical exhibition on November 15. The show, Modernisms: Iranian, Turkish, and Indian Highlights from NYU’s Abby Weed Grey Collection, includes paintings and sculptures from the 1960s by artists such as Parviz Tanavoli, […]

By Chris Miller RECOMMENDED Sixty years ago, Abby Weed Grey began traveling to Iran, Turkey and northern India to collect art. A childless, recently widowed St. Paul housewife, she used her late husband’s small fortune to establish a foundation for “the encouragement of art through the assembling of international collections of art for cultural exchange […]

By Michael McLeod Abby’s Road Here’s an April 1960 entry, dateline, Katmandu, in the diary of a solitary tourist–a determined Midwestern widow named Abby Weed Grey: “My usual feelers were out, trying to find artists. Other travelers might have been suspicious or reluctant to follow the advice of a hotel clerk, but this was my […]

Drawing on its remarkable collection of modern Iranian, Indian, and Turkish art, the Grey Art Gallery at New York University presents Modernisms: Iranian, Turkish, and Indian Highlights from NYU’s Abby Weed Grey Collection. Featuring approximately thirty to forty artworks from each country, the exhibition examines the artistic practices in Iran, Turkey, and India, from the 1960s and early ’70s via selections from the Abby Weed Grey Collection of Modern Asian and Middle Eastern Art.

By Mary Houlihan The new exhibit “Modernisms: Iranian, Turkish and Indian Highlights from NYU’s Abby Weed Grey Collection” is a survey of art from three nations where vibrant forms of modernism were created in the 1960s and 1970s. The 114 colorful and intriguing works range from Iranian and Turkish artists who explore calligraphy and ornamentation […]

By Matt Cassidy Undoubtedly art poses many questions, yet the Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing periods of lockdown brought to the fore a new set of questions. “It enabled us to think about what art means to people if you aren’t able to gather in person at an exhibition,” says Maya Allison, Executive Director and […]

Abu Dhabi : The NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) Art Gallery reopens to the public tomorrow, Monday, November 15, with Modernisms: Iranian, Turkish, and Indian Highlights from NYU’s Abby Weed Grey Collection. This is the first physical exhibition in the Gallery since it moved to virtual programming in Spring of 2020, and will run through to February 5, […]

On view in Abu Dhabi until February 5, 2022, the paintings and sculptures in Modernisms shed new light on artists like Parviz Tanavoli, Fahrelnissa Zeid, and M.F. Husain. The NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery is delighted to welcome back visitors to its space for the exhibition Modernisms: Iranian, Turkish, and Indian Highlights from NYU’s Abby Weed Grey Collection. […]

By Justin Curto As happens when it’s winter in Evanston, we’re all sick and tired. That’s why I didn’t give you a column last week — I was in the depths of not-quite-strep-throat, and most campus arts organizations were still waking up from winter break. So, thank god the Block Museum’s new exhibitions opened this […]

By Stephanie Kulke A major exhibition at The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University is the first to bring together modern art from Iran, Turkey and India, seeking to expand Western perspectives of modern art. “Modernisms: Iranian, Turkish and Indian Highlights from NYU’s Abby Grey Collection” surveys art from three nations where unique and vibrant […]

By Lori Waxman Is it any wonder that the upcoming season of art exhibitions testifies to so much that is wretched in our world, from runaway climate change to unchecked technological takeovers to the crackdown on immigrants? It shouldn’t be. This is the new now. If sometimes artists reflect on disaster and injustice through beauty […]

Entitled “Modernisms”, the exhibit is organized with Iranian as well as Turkish and Indian highlights from New York University’s Abby Weed Grey Collection, the organizers have announced. One of the Iranian artworks is a bronze sculpture from Parviz Tanavoli’s Heech series. “Mosques of Isfahan”, an ink, watercolor, and gold and silver paint on paper by […]